There’s a general sense of doom on the TikTok feeds these days, and no wonder: it looks like the video service may be banned in the US as of January 19th. TikTok creators are offering satirical goodbyes to their Chinese spies and wondering how quickly they can download the several hundred — or thousand — videos they have up on the service.

TikTok itself apparently doesn’t like the idea of allowing its creators to bulk download their videos. You can download — in TXT or JSON format — a certain amount of your data, which, according to the support page, “may include but is not limited to your username, watch video history, comment history, and privacy settings.” When I tried it, it did not include my videos. 

You can also share individual videos — the same way you can any file — but if you’ve got a library of a couple of hundred or more TikTok videos, that’s going to be quite a job. In that case, it’s a lot better to have a bulk download strategy.

To find out how to do that, I went into TikTok and waded through a group of videos offering different methods for downloading your content. I tried several of the methods and found two that worked relatively painlessly: one is easier but not free and the other is a bit complex but completely free. (Both, incidentally, need to be done on a computer rather than a phone.) 

A caveat before I begin: not being an actual TikTok creator, I only had two published TikTok videos on my account, which I had made as an experiment some time ago. As a result, it didn’t take much time for me to download them using either method. If you’re a true TikTok creator, expect downloads and conversions to take some time.

Several people recommended an app called Repurpose.io. This is not a free app — it costs $35 a month or $349 a year. For a short time, Repurpose.io was offering free downloads from TikTok to Google Drive and Dropbox but had to withdraw the offer “due to high demand.” However, you still get to download 10 videos for free over 14 days, so you can try it out first. 

Repurpose.io lets you distribute your content on different platforms: you simply tell it where to upload the videos (besides TikTok, it will pull data from Instagram, YouTube, Zoom, and a number of other services) and where you want it to send them (besides Instagram and other services, you can save them to Dropbox, SoundCloud, Google Drive, and other apps). You can schedule regular transfers, repurpose only future content or all existing content, and even create clips (if, for example, you are sending YouTube videos to TikTok).

When I tried it, Repurpose.io easily picked up my two TikTok videos and transferred them to my Google Drive in a couple of minutes. While it should take a lot longer if you have, say, several hundred videos, the interface keeps you up to date on which videos have been transferred and how many are left.

The paid app allows you to transfer an unlimited number of published videos to up to five different accounts. It could make a lot of sense if you are a dedicated TikTok video creator and are thinking of moving your videos to another service.

If you don’t mind playing a little with code, there’s a free way to do it as well. A consultant named Joanne Moxam has published a handy step-by-step YouTube video on how to use Chrome’s browser console to save all your links in one fell swoop, move the data to a spreadsheet, and then use an online tool to bulk download your videos.

Below, I’ve summarized the steps that Moxam suggests (which I successfully tried). She strongly recommends that you do this by using the Chrome browser.

• Go to your Profile page (by clicking on your personal icon in the top-right corner).
• Bring up the browser console by hitting the F12 key. (If you’re on a Mac, you may need to use Fn-F12.) You’ll see a window open on the right filled with code; if you’re not used to that, don’t let it bother you — you won’t have to deal too much with it. Just make sure that the menu at the very top (which will say Elements / Console / Sources) has Console underlined.
• At the bottom of the console, where there is a single >, paste in the following:

let goToBottom = setInterval(() => window.scrollBy(0, 400), 1000);

According to Moxam, this scrolls all your videos down to the bottom, making them part of a single window so they can be selected.

Note: you may see a warning not to paste code into the console that you don’t understand; you’ll be asked to type “allow pasting” and hit Enter first. Go ahead; I used both of these codes without an issue.

• Now enter the second code, which will automatically select and download a CSV file of your links to all the videos in your profile to your computer. It’s a bit long: here’s a link to Moxam’s code.
• The resulting file will be called my_data.csv. 
• Import the CSV file to a spreadsheet.

Now you can use the links to do a bulk download of your videos. Moxam recommends a free online service called TOKdownload, which is what I used. 

• Copy the links from the spreadsheet and paste them into the designated field. (Note: since I was only downloading a couple of videos, I had no problems; as Moxam suggests, if you’re dealing with large numbers, you may want to download in batches of 50 or so in order to not overwhelm the app.)
• Click the Download button.

• The app will download and process the links both as the videos and covers. It could take a while.
• Once it’s done, you’ll get buttons to Download All Videos and Download All Covers. Click on the former, and you will get a zip file containing MP4 files of your videos.

If you’re still unsure of yourself, you can go through Moxam’s video — she’s slow and careful in her instructions. And make sure to also check her associated webpage for any updates.

There are a number of mobile apps available as well that will let you download and save your TikTok videos. If you don’t have access to a computer and must use your phone, you may find them useful, but I tried a couple and found them awkward to use, usually limited to one video at a time, and (unless you were willing to pay) ad-heavy.

However you do it — and even if there should be some kind of last-minute reprieve for TikTok — it is always a good idea to back up your online videos, especially if they are either personally significant to you or represent creative work that you will want to hold on to and look back on in the years to come.