Whether you have privacy concerns or you’re troubled by what short-form videos might be doing to your attention span, there are valid reasons why it may be time to delete your TikTok account.
If you do choose to delete your TikTok, keep in mind that all of your videos will be deleted unless it was saved or downloaded by another user. So before you do the deed, make sure to save any favorite videos on your phone.
Once you back up the videos you’d like to keep, here’s how to say goodbye to TikTok for good.
Quick tip: After deleting your TikTok account, it will be in a “deactivated” state for 30 days before it’s permanently deleted. In case you change your mind, simply log back during this time and reactivate your account.
Once your TikTok account is deleted successfully, so will all your videos. That means you don’t have to go through the tedious task of deleting them yourself. The same goes for all the messages in your inbox — those will be gone forever as well.
If you don’t want to lose your TikTok data, backing it up is really easy. The data that TikTok may back up includes your profile information, activity, and app settings.
1. Open TikTok on your favorite web browser and log into your account.
2. Click on your profile picture on the top right and select Settings.
3. In the Privacy section, click Data to access the Download TikTok data page.
4. Under Select file format on the Request data tab (it’s selected by default), choose whether you’d like the data to be in TXT or JSON format. The former is a human-readable text file, while the latter is machine-readable. Then, click Request data.
TikTok will then start processing your request to back up your data, which can take a couple of days. Once the backup is ready, you can download it from the Download data tab on the Download TikTok data page. It will be in a ZIP format.
Quick tip: Be sure to download the data within four days, otherwise TikTok will delete it, forcing you to request it again.
After you decide if you want to back up your data, you can delete your TikTok account.
1. Open the TikTok app, and tap the Profile button in the bottom right-hand corner of the app.
2. Tap the three-lines menu in the top-right corner of the screen and then select Settings and privacy.
3. Tap Manage account from the list of options.
4. Tap Delete account, which is the last option.
5. Follow the on-screen prompts and tap Continue again to confirm your decision.
After you delete your account, the last and final step to permanently deleting TikTok is to uninstall the app from your phone.
If you’re using a web browser, follow the steps below to delete your TikTok account.
1. Open TikTok on your favorite web browser and log into your account.
2. Click on your profile picture on the top right and select Settings.
3. Under Account Control, click Delete on the right. TikTok will then take you through the steps to delete your account.
Sometimes, TikTok will not allow you to delete your account. However, this does not mean you’re stuck with the account forever. Once you resolve whatever is preventing you from closing that account, you should be able to do it with no problem.
The most common reason why many people fail to delete their TikTok account is lack of contact information. Make sure you’ve entered and verified your phone number or email address before attempting to close your account.
In some cases, if you’re using the TikTok app, it could be that it has suffered a glitch. Just force quit the app and try again.