More bad news for tens of millions of U.S. TikTok users today, as it’s suddenly better to be an Android user than an iPhone user. But given reports that eBay was listing TikTok enabled iPhones for tens of thousands of dollars, this is a cheaper way to get your fix.
TikTok has been absent on Apple App Store and Google’s Play Store since the short-lived ban last month. While users can use installed apps almost as usual, there have been no new installs or updates. This is a nightmare for those changing phones but also a security issue, with no updates available to fix bugs or vulnerabilities.
TikTok has now come to the rescue — kind of. “We’re enhancing ways for our community to continue using TikTok by making Android Package Kits available at TikTok.com/download,” it posted Saturday. And so now “our U.S. Android users can download our app and create, discover, and connect on TikTok.”
Bad news for iPhone users, though. With no stateside sideloading, there’s no way for TikTok to do the same for them. The App Store blackout continues. The app can be found here, and while I don’t recommend sideloading, these are unusual circumstances.
We live in strange times. Not only has DeepSeek turned up, admitting to many of the data harvesting abuses TikTok has denied, and been able to masquerade freely on the official app stores, topping both Apple’s and Google’s charts, TikTok still cannot. And now we have this Chinese-owned app being offered for a direct install without the usual security checks and protections that would normally be in place.
Sideloading has become a divisive issue on both iPhone and Android, with Apple warning European users that its forced opening up to third-party stores is dangerous, even as Google and Samsung restrict sideloading more than ever before. Again, though, these are unusual circumstances we’ll likely not see again.