TikTok is now providing US downloads of the Android model of the app by itself web site, the corporate announced final night time. With the change, Android customers in the USA now have a straightforward technique to obtain or replace the app for the primary time since Google removed it from Google Play last month in response to a US ban on the app.
You may obtain both TikTok and TikTok Lite, a model of the app designed to work with slower web connections. As soon as that’s finished, you possibly can set up or replace the app simply by opening the file and approving its set up. The method is fast — I used to be capable of replace to the newest model of TikTok on my Pixel 6 in about as a lot time because it takes to get an app from Google Play.
Like Apple, Google requires app makers to observe certain rules to be listed on the Play Retailer — guidelines TikTok isn’t essentially certain to when providing the obtain by itself. A TikTok help page claims that, however, the app “stays secure and safe.” It says that TikTok’s supply code remains to be examined by Oracle and the “Impartial Safety Inspectors” that ByteDance selected last year following former reported accusations that its Undertaking Texas effort to wall off its US operations from China and appease US lawmakers was “largely beauty.”
Google didn’t instantly reply to The Verge’s request for remark.
Apple doesn’t enable sideloading within the US, so iPhone homeowners should proceed using it in a web browser whereas ready for Apple to reinstate the app on the App Retailer. That will not occur anytime quickly, as neither Google nor Apple have appeared wanting to defy the ban and risk billions in fines, regardless of President Trump’s government order staying enforcement of it.