In case you've been living under a rock, TikTok is a short-form video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Launching in 2016, it quickly rose to popularity, eventually becoming one of the most-downloaded apps in the U.S. by 2018.

It’s looking increasingly likely that any sale of TikTok will mean US users have to download a new app. And that could mean an almost entirely different experience.

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is developing a backup plan as it faces a deadline to sell its US operations or risk a

TikTok is developing a new app for its more than 170 million U.S. users alongside a potential sale, according to a report from The Information. The news follows comments President Donald Trump made on Friday that he “pretty much” has a deal for a U.S. company to purchase TikTok’s U.S. operations, although he did not disclose the potential buyer.

TikTok's owner, ByteDance, has plans to move Americans to a US-specific version of CapCut as it looks to meet requirements for a divest-or-ban law.

If ByteDance does release a new version of TikTok, users will need to migrate to the new app, a process that will likely only require downloading the new app and logging in with your credentials. If the new TikTok app is does become available for download, users will have until March 2026 to migrate.

The TikTok US-only app strategy centers on creating an independent recommendation system that would operate entirely apart from ByteDance’s global infrastructure. The new app is expected to use only data from US users to train its recommendation algorithms, further distancing it from TikTok’s global systems, according to the SCMP report.

TikTok's reported plan to launch a separate app in the U.S. could disrupt ad targeting and user data continuity.

According to new reporting from The Information, TikTok is building a new app ahead of a sale to non-Chinese investors. American users will need to download the new app, which will replace the existing TikTok app in the United States.

TikTok is building a new version of its app for users in the United States ahead of a planned sale of the app to a group of investors, The Information reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.

TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy investigation into user data transferred to China. The Irish Data Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow up to a previous investigation that ended earlier this year with a 530 million euro ($620 million) fine.