TikTok has officially shut down in the United States. The company says it is “working to restore” its service in the U.S. “as soon as possible” with the help of incoming President Trump once he takes office on Monday.
The TikTok app is no longer available in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store in the United States. CapCut, the video editing app also owned by ByteDance, has also been shutdown in the United States and has been removed from the App Store.
Here’s the full text of the first notification that was sent to TikTok users around 9 p.m. ET:
Important update from TikTok
We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable.
We’re working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned.
At 10:30 p.m. ET, TikTok officially went offline in the United States. When you open the app, you’ll see the following message:
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.
We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
As of 10:00 a.m. CT, I saw the following message when I tried to login to TikTok on my iPhone:
TikTok is temporarily unavailable
We’re working hard to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience.
TikTok is be banned from the App Store in the United States as of today, Sunday, January 19, as the United States Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the law that forces ByteDance to sell TikTok by the 19th or face a ban in the United States.
The Supreme Court failed to reverse the ban, and said that it is upholding the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.” Chinese TikTok parent company ByteDance must sell the U.S. version of the app in order for it to continue to operate.
The law requires TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese company, and ByteDance was given nine months in which to do so. However, the company chose to appeal the ruling instead of searching for buyers. ByteDance argued the law was unconstitutional, as it violated the First Amendment. Supreme Court rejected that argument, saying that as a Chinese company, ByteDance does not have First Amendment rights.
ByteDance has repeatedly said it would not sell TikTok, as the code was quite complex and it would need to be uncoupled from ByteDance’s software tools. The Chinese government has opposed a sale, as the proprietary TikTok algorithm would need to be included in a sale. It is possible that now the ban has been upheld, they may reconsider selling the app.
President-elect Donald Trump – who asked the Supreme Court to delay making a decision and to delay TikTok’s ban, but saw the court decline to do so.
In an interview today with NBC News, Trump indicated that he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day extension:
“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in the phone interview. “If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday.
In an internal memo on Saturday night (first revealed by The Verge), TikTok told its employees that it is optimistic about the app’s future under Trump:
“We know this is disappointing for you not only as employees, but as users. However, we are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please know our teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible.”
If Trump is successful, TikTok could return to the United States as soon as Monday for at least 90 days.