TikTok now offers its Android app for download outside of Google Play

TikTok is now offering US downloads of the Android type of the app connected its ain website, the institution announced past night. With the change, Android users successful the United States now person an easy measurement to download aliases update the app for the first clip since Google removed it from Google Play past month successful consequence to a US prohibition connected the app.

You tin download both TikTok and TikTok Lite, a type of the app designed to activity pinch slower net connections. Once that’s done, you tin instal aliases update the app conscionable by opening the record and approving its installation. The process is speedy — I was capable to update to the astir caller type of TikTok connected my Pixel 6 successful astir arsenic overmuch clip arsenic it takes to get an app from Google Play.

Like Apple, Google requires app makers to travel certain rules to beryllium listed connected the Play Store — rules TikTok isn’t needfully bound to erstwhile offering the download connected its own. A TikTok help page claims that, nevertheless, the app “remains safe and secure.” It says that TikTok’s root codification is still examined by Oracle and the “Independent Security Inspectors” that ByteDance selected past year pursuing erstwhile reported accusations that its Project Texas effort to wall disconnected its US operations from China and appease US lawmakers was “largely cosmetic.”

Google did not instantly respond to The Verge’s petition for comment.

Apple doesn’t let sideloading successful the US, truthful iPhone owners will person to proceed using it successful a web browser while waiting for Apple to reinstate the app connected the App Store. That whitethorn not hap anytime soon, arsenic neither Google nor Apple person seemed eager to defy the prohibition and risk billions successful fines, contempt President Trump’s executive bid staying enforcement of it.