← Back to all services
Social
TikTok
Updated Sep 28, 2026
TikTok is short video, and its export hands you the video files themselves rather than just a list of where to find them. On an account more than a year old that is tens of gigabytes of things you can already watch in the app. Your watch history, liked videos, comments and drafts come too, along with the advertising profile TikTok has built about you.
What you'll get
Video HistoryCommentsMessagesProfile InfoAd Interactions
Before you start
- This one is in the app, not the website. TikTok does not offer the export on the desktop site, and people who try there end up convinced the feature has been removed.
- Open TikTok, then Profile, then the menu at the top right.
- Go to Settings and privacy, then Download your data.
- Check how much free space you actually have. Requesting the video files on a long-running account is the fastest way to fill a phone.
How to download
- Choose what to request. There is a selection of text-only files, and a separate option that includes the video and image files. Untick the second unless you mean it.
- Request the data export, then confirm the confirmation. TikTok has two taps here and people assume the first one did it.
- Wait. Three to seven days is normal and TikTok does not give you a progress bar or a way to hurry it.
- When the email arrives, the link is good for a few days. Download it and confirm the file size matches what you asked for before you assume it worked.
Pro tip
There is a checkbox for including the actual video files, and it is on by default. Unless you are archiving for a video editor or a lawyer, untick it. Everything you would want to know about what you watched is in the JSON, which is a few megabytes rather than a few dozen gigabytes.
After the download
- The activity file logs every video that appeared in your feed, not only the ones you liked or watched to the end. For a heavy account this runs into the tens of thousands of entries and it is the most honest description of your attention span anyone has ever produced.
- The ad interaction files list every ad you were served, with a timestamp and an internal ad ID. Advertisers get these numbers. So can you.
- Your comment history is a separate file and it is worth keeping on its own. It is a record of every argument and every recommendation you have ever left on the internet.
- Saved videos and liked videos arrive as lists of IDs rather than as anything readable. If you care about them, the video files are the only way to get the actual content back.
- Nothing here can be imported anywhere. TikTok has no importer for any of it, so this is an archive and not a move.