Apple and Google on Thursday evening restored TikTok to their respective app stores in the U.S. on Thursday, several weeks after they removed the short video platform following a national security law that banned it in the country.
The companies has also removed other apps owned by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance — video editor CapCut and social media app Lemon8 — and on Thursday restored them as well.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden had passed the law last year, calling on ByteDance to sell TikTok to a company that wasn’t owned by a Chinese entity by January 19. The law was spurred by concerns that the company’s ties to Beijing threatened national security, and would have imposed severe financial penalties on app store operators if they didn’t comply. The Supreme Court had upheld the law on January 17.
But right after he assumed office, current U.S. President Donald Trump on January 20 signed an executive order aimed at delaying the law, and gave a 75-day extension to ByteDance to find a seller.
TikTok promptly restored services in the country, but Apple and Google kept the app out of their stores since there was some confusion regarding the penalties that would be imposed since the law had only been deferred.
For users in the U.S., those who had uninstalled TikTok were not able to reinstall it, but those who didn’t have been able to use it. Earlier this month, TikTok urged Android smartphone users to sideload the app.
Since then, Trump has said that he would like the U.S. to own a 50% share in TikTok through a joint venture with other tech companies. He also inaugurated a sovereign fund that could participate in TikTok’s dealmaking.
Last month, CNBC reported that TikTok’s traffic was restored almost 90% from the pre-ban time according to Cloudflare Radar data. However, rival social networks are trying to bank on this uncertaintly. Both X and Bluesky launched dedicated vertical video feeds while Meta announced a video editing app that would rival Capcut.
According to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, TikTok was the second most-downloaded app in the country last year, with 52 million downloads.
