In the evening hours of Jan. 18, American users somberly checking TikTok one last time before the app’s ban in the U.S. went into effect found that their access had already been revoked.
TikTok’s parent company pulled access to the popular video sharing app less than two hours before it was expected to go dark. The app’s 170 million active users in the U.S. now instead see an eyebrow-raising pop-up extolling the possibility of president-elect Donald Trump saving the app. Despite the surprising timing of TikTok’s shut down, it followed months of legislative and legal battles unfolding right up until the day the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” was set to go into effect. What many hadn’t digested, however, was how the U.S. law, which targets any “foreign adversary controlled application,” would lead to other popular apps getting yanked, too.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and the single specified company in the bill, removed its apps and associated platforms immediately before the U.S. law went into effect — a glimpse of the true scope of the China-owned company’s influence in U.S. users’ digital diets. Other foreign-controlled apps, or those affiliated with companies deemed foreign adversaries, could surely follow.
Here are the major apps no longer available in the U.S. due to the ban, as of Jan. 19:
When will TikTok come back? Americans turn to VPNs with mixed results
TikTok Studio, TikTok Shop Seller
In addition to the main platform, ByteDance has removed its secondary TikTok offerings for creators and companies, including TikTok Studio (a video creation and scheduling tool) and TikTok Shop Seller Center (a management platform for businesses selling on TikTok Shop).
Marvel Snap
Marvel Snap, a popular card game battler with millions of players in the U.S., was an unexpected casualty of the TikTok ban. While created by California-based developer Second Dinner, the game is published by ByteDance-owned Nuverse. Other Nuverse-published games, like Earth: Revival – Deep Underground and Ragnarok X: 3rd Anniversary are still available for download for now, the Verge reports. Nuverse did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Mashable Light Speed
CapCut
A popular video-editing app used by fancam makers and meme editors across the internet (and on TikTok), CapCut was pulled from the U.S. app store. Many had expected and warned users that the app, also owned by ByteDance, would be affected by the ban.
Lemon8
TikTok’s Lemon8, originally touted as a hybrid Pinterest-meets-Instagram social media alternative, was also axed in the late hours of Jan. 18. Since its launch in 2023, amid early debate of banning its parent app, Lemon8 had grown in popularity among fitness and wellness creators.
Hypic
Hypic is ByteDance’s free photo-editing offering, heavily promoted on TikTok as an appearance-focused photoshopping tool. It also allowed TikTok users to apply AI-powered face filters to their videos.
Lark, Lark Team Collaboration, Lark Rooms Display, Lark Rooms Controller
ByteDance-owned Lark is a productivity suite for businesses created as a competitor to Google Workspace. The suite, including secondary controller and presentation apps, was removed from U.S. marketplaces.
Gauth
Gauth, originally known as GauthMath, is an AI-powered study app created by ByteDance and one of the most popular education apps on the Apple App Store. The app reached 200 million users worldwide in 2024.
Other apps
Apps popular in international markets were also pulled in the wake of ByteDance’s crackdown. These include Melolo, a short form video app run by Poligon and popular in Southeast Asia; Fizzo, Poligon’s e-book platform; and Tokopedia, an e-commerce site popular in Indonesia. Poligon is a Singapore-based subsidiary of ByteDance.
Notably, RedNote (Xiaohongshu) is still available for download from the U.S. app store, despite being a Chinese-owned platform subject to China’s data privacy and censorship laws. In the lead-up to TikTok’s banning, many users have flocked to the video-forward platform as a potential alternative.
