TikTok's US ownership changed hands on January 22, 2026, when ByteDance divested its US operations into a new, majority-American-owned company (background on the deal). Your app, account, followers, and drafts moved over automatically. But the update to the terms of service is real, and it's a reasonable moment to keep a personal backup of anything you'd hate to lose.
What changed with TikTok's US ownership in 2026
Oracle and Silver Lake, both US companies, along with Abu Dhabi-based MGX, now serve as the managing investors of TikTok's US entity, holding a combined 45% stake. ByteDance retains 19.9%, just under the 20% cap set by the law that forced this deal. The transition happened on the backend — your app updates through the normal App Store or Google Play channel, and your account, followers, drafts, and saved bookmarks were migrated to the new infrastructure without you doing anything.
Why back up your TikTok videos now?
The ownership change came with an updated terms of service and a new data-handling structure under Oracle's servers, and plenty of longtime users are uneasy about a platform-defining shift they had no say in. Some creators have deleted their accounts outright rather than continue under the new structure. You don't have to go that far to be sensible about it — downloading your own videos costs nothing and takes a few minutes.
How to download your TikTok data the official way
TikTok has an official data download option under Settings → Account → Download your data, which exports your video files along with account data like your follower list and watch history. It's thorough, but slow — exports can take days to process, and you get a bulk .zip file rather than clean individual clips ready to repost or edit.
How to download a single TikTok video fast
Copy the link, paste, download
- Open the video you want to save and tap Share.
- Copy the link.
- Paste it into the TikTok downloader and download — you get the clean source file in seconds, not days.
This works for any public video, including your own, and doesn't touch your account or require a login on TikTok's end.
Try the TikTok downloaderPaste a link, save the clean file. No watermark, no waiting.Open the toolBacking up TikTok videos: worth doing either way
Platform ownership changes are exactly the kind of event that makes "I'll back it up eventually" turn into "I wish I had." Whatever you decide about staying on TikTok long-term, saving your best videos somewhere you control is a five-minute job that costs you nothing to have done.
If you're mainly trying to save someone else's clip rather than your own, note that TikTok's official export only covers your account — for anything public, see our comparison of free TikTok downloaders now that several of the old go-to tools have gone paid.
