How to download a TikTok video

Saving a TikTok takes three steps and about ten seconds. The parts worth reading are the ones either side of that: where the link actually comes from, which of the quality rows to pick, and what the error means when it does not work.

The three steps

1. Copy the link. In the app, open the video and tap the arrow on the right edge — the same button you would use to send it to someone. Choose Copy link. That gives you a short address onvm.tiktok.com (iOS) or vt.tiktok.com (Android), and both work here exactly as they are. On the web, open the video and copy the address out of the bar; it will look liketiktok.com/@name/video/ followed by a long number.
2. Paste it into the downloader. Press Download and the post's public metadata is read once. Every file it holds is listed: each video quality with its size, every slide if it is a photo post, and the sound as its own row.
3. Pick a row. The highest quality sits at the top, so the first row needs no thought. The file saves to wherever your browser puts downloads, named after the creator's handle, the post id and the quality — so a folder of them stays navigable.

Where the link comes from, per device

iPhone and iPad

The Share arrow is on the right edge of the video, below the comment and bookmark buttons. Copy link is in the top row of the sheet that appears. The address it produces begins vm.tiktok.com.

Downloaded files land in the Downloads folder of the Files app rather than in Photos. To get one into your camera roll, open Files, press and hold the video, and choose Save to Photos. That is Safari's behaviour rather than anything this tool controls — see also where files end up.

Android

Same arrow, same Copy link, but the short address beginsvt.tiktok.com. Chrome saves to the Downloads folder and the gallery normally picks up new media on its own within a few seconds.

Desktop

Open the video so it has its own page — clicking through from a grid rather than watching it in a feed overlay — then copy the address bar. Files save wherever your browser normally puts them.

Which quality should you pick?

The top row, unless you have a reason not to. TikTok encodes several passes of each video at upload time, typically 1080p, 720p and 540p, and states the byte count of each one in the same data the page uses. That is why the buttons can read 1080p · 3.4 MB before anything transfers: the size is not a guess or a probe request, it is TikTok's own figure.

One oddity is worth expecting, because it looks like a bug and is not: a lower-resolution row is occasionally the larger file. TikTok encodes each pass independently and sometimes gives a 540p version a much higher bitrate. The rows are ordered by resolution because that is what people are choosing between; the sizes are shown so you can spot the exception.

Nothing is upscaled. If the creator filmed on an older phone and TikTok's best pass is 540p, then 540p is the ceiling — there is no 4K to unlock, whatever another site claims. More on choosing a quality.

The watermark

The download has none, and the reason is more reassuring than the marketing version. TikTok stores every video twice: the copy behind its own Save video button has the drifting logo and the creator's handle burned into the picture, and the copy its web player streams has neither. This tool reads the second one. Nothing is cropped, blurred or re-encoded, because there is nothing to remove.

The stamped copy is offered too, as one clearly labelled row, for when you want the credit visible — which on some platforms is the polite thing to do. There is a fuller explanation of how that works.

Photo posts and sounds

A TikTok photo post is not a video. It is several stills shown in sequence over a sound, it lives at a /photo/ address, and there is no MP4 of it on any server — the sliding, beat-matched thing you watched was assembled by the app on your screen. So it comes back as its parts: each slide at full resolution, in playback order, plus the sound.More on slideshows.

The sound is always offered separately, on every post. It saves as.m4a rather than .mp3, because that is genuinely what the file is — AAC audio in an MP4 container — and converting it would lose quality to change nothing but the extension.More on sounds.

When it does not work

Almost every failure is a property of the link or the post rather than of the download. The message on screen names the specific cause; the common ones are:

• The link points at a profile, not a post. Open the video itself first, then share it.
• It is a /live link. A broadcast in progress has no finished file. Once it ends and is posted to the profile, its permalink works.
• The account is private, or the post is follower-only. Our server fetches TikTok with no session, so it sees what any logged-out visitor sees. If you can already watch it, theprivate downloader reads the page source your own browser received instead.
• The post is region-locked or age-restricted. TikTok applies those per viewer and per country, to our server as much as to anyone. No downloader can change where a request comes from.
• TikTok asked this server to pass a verification check. That one is about us, not your video, and it usually clears within a minute.

Every error message and what it means.

What you may do with the file

The creator owns the video, and a download button transfers nothing. Saving your own posts, keeping an offline copy of something you are allowed to keep, and reposting with permission are the intended uses. Removing the watermark specifically to pass someone else's clip off as your own is the one use this is not for — and TikTok's own systems are reasonably good at spotting it.

Sounds are a separate and harder question: a TikTok sound is frequently a commercial music recording, licensed to TikTok for use inside TikTok and nowhere else. Saving it does not extend that licence to you.