The looming Jan. 19, 2025, TikTok ban is getting more and more real -- and closer than ever.
On Dec. 6, the US Court of Appeals upheld a law that requires China-owned ByteDance to divest TikTok or else face a ban in the US. John Moolenaar (R-Michigan) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), the chair and ranking member on a House of Representatives committee on China competition, also urged the CEOs of Alphabet and Apple to be ready to remove the TikTok app from their app stores on Jan. 19.
If you're a TikTok user, especially a creator, you're probably worried about a number of things. Will TikTok really disappear in January? Are there any similar apps that you can switch over to? Will all your TikTok videos get deleted?
If you're worried about that last one, you should think about saving all the videos you've ever posted on TikTok. Or else they might get lost to the ether. Good thing it's easy to do.
For more, check out how to make your TikTok videos better and 11 privacy settings to change on TikTok.
How to download all your TikTok videos on your iPhone and Android
On your Apple or Android device, open the TikTok app and tap Profile in the bottom right of the navigation bar. Now go to any video you've posted, hit the three-dot menu button on the bottom right, and tap the Save video button. That will download the video to your phone's video library.
If you have drafts you want to save, the process is similar but not exactly the same. Go into your drafts, tap a video and then hit Save on the menu in the right of the editor.
Unfortunately, there is no way to do this for every video at once, so it might become burdensome if you have dozens, or even hundreds, of videos posted to TikTok.
If TikTok really goes away, maybe it's time to look for some alternatives. Bluesky is also a big deal, if you hadn't already heard.