TikTok Back On Apple App Store And Google Play Store: Here’s What It Means

TikTok is back in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, so for the first time since late January, users can download and install it on their iPhones, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel and other phones. Here’s why this matters.

Back in January, TikTok briefly went dark before a law came into effect banning it as its owner, ByteDance hadn’t sold it. That’s when it vanished from the Apple and Google app stores. A matter of hours later, after reassuring words from President Trump, TikTok resumed service. However, even after an executive order from the president seeking to delay the ban for 75 days, neither Apple nor Google returned the app to their stores.

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One reason for this is legal advisers may have said that they could still have been liable to fees if the app had been downloaded.

On Thursday, Feb. 13, “Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are restoring ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok to their app stores on Thursday following assurances in a letter from US Attorney General Pam Bondi that a ban wouldn’t immediately be enforced,” Bloomberg reported.

The details of the letter have not been shared, but it seems to have been enough for Apple and Google to be comfortable having the app again.

Why is this important? Well, if you didn’t have the app on your phone already, or had deleted it, it was suddenly impossible to download it again after Jan. 19. There was recently an option for Android users to sideload the app, but it was much more complicated than pressing a download button in the app store, and had potential security issues, too. Even then, there was no option for Apple users.

Now, it’s fully available again in the United States, as it already was in other countries—the ban was for the U.S. only.

Just as importantly, it means that the app can be updated again: even those iPhones which still had the app on them were stuck with the most recent version they’d been updated to, which is also a problem as security issues arose or as TikTok wanted to add new features, for instance.

So, are users safe now that TikTok is back in the App Store? Not quite. “If [President Trump] doesn’t negotiate a deal by early April to address the national security concerns around TikTok’s current ownership, the app could be shut down once again,” Bloomberg concludes.

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