February 14, 2025 – Following the U.S. government’s assurance that it would not immediately enforce the ban, Apple and Google have reinstated TikTok on their respective app stores.
Apple stated that the application would be back online later on Thursday, while TikTok has already made its reappearance on Google’s Play Store.
The development comes after a series of events that unfolded earlier this month. On January 17th, local time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in support of the ban on the short-video social media platform TikTok, resulting in the app’s removal from U.S. stores on the 19th.
However, just 14 hours after the service disruption, TikTok gradually resumed operations on January 20th, Beijing time. Sources close to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, revealed that no agreement had been reached with the U.S. government. Instead, it was the U.S. side’s decision to temporarily suspend the implementation of the “ban unless sold” act that allowed TikTok to resume operations.
Earlier this month, TikTok announced on its official support center that due to the temporary inability to download the app from U.S. regional app stores, it had provided users with an Android APK installation package to install the software on their Android devices. For iOS users, they could add the web version of TikTok to their phone’s home screen as a workaround.
