How To Use TikTok: A Beginner’s Guide

TikTok has been the fastest-growing social media platform in history, and there are currently more than two billion TikTok users worldwide.

The system has been designed to be easy to use once you’ve spent a little time playing around with it. If you’re late to the party, though, you may initially find it difficult to figure out everything you can do on the app. This beginner’s guide will let you accelerate the learning curve and start having fun almost as soon as you download TikTok to your phone.

1. Download and Install TikTok

You put TikTok onto your phone the same way that you’d install any other app: find it in either the App Store or Google Play (depending on your device), tap the “install” button, and you’ll be ready to go in seconds.

2. Set Up Your Account

Once you’ve opened the app, tap “Sign Up,” and choose whether you want to join with your email or phone number, your Apple details (if you’re on an iPhone), or a social media account like Google or Facebook.

When you’ve finished that process (you’ll be asked to confirm your email, phone number, or other details), enter your birthdate (be careful: it’s difficult to change and your age will determine what posts you can see and whether you can access some features), and create a password and username (the username can’t be changed more than once a month).

That’s all you have to do, but it’s a good time to set up your TikTok profile by adding a photo, the name that will be displayed on your profile, and a brief bio that users will see when visiting your profile. You can also link your other socials, allowing you to send your TikTok posts directly to those apps.

3. Poke Around

This will let you get a feel for TikTok’s features and how to find them.

The main home screen you see when logging on is the “For You” page, which shows the scrollable TikTok feed of posts from your friends and the people you follow on the app, along with others that align with the content you’ve watched, promoted content, and ads.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see several tabs other than “For You.”

• Live: Lets you see TikTok Live streams
• Explore: Recently added (and not available in all locations), this is like the Explore page on Instagram; all sorts of trending videos appear here.
• Following: Shows you a TikTok feed from the users you follow.
• Shop: As you could probably guess, this takes you to the TikTok shop.
• Search: Indicated by a magnifying glass icon, this lets you search for content and accounts by keywords and usernames, as well as TikTok sounds (usually music).
• On the right-hand side of your For You feed, you’ll see a column of icons that in order, let you follow the video’s creator, like the video, show you how many likes the video has, let you comment on the post and see other comments, favorite (bookmark) the video, repost the video, and find other posts using the same sound(s).

There are also five important icons at the bottom of the screen.

• Home: Takes you to your For You page (or the tab you’ve chosen at the top of the For You page).
• Friends: This helps you find and then follow friends on the app. Older devices may show a “Discover” icon instead, which is similar to the “Following” tab at the top.
• The “+” Button: You tap this to begin creating a TikTok video.
• Inbox: This takes you to your messages and all of your video notifications.
• Profile: If you didn’t set up your TikTok profile when you joined, you can do it here. This is also where you can see your following and follower counts, find friends to follow (the icon of a person and a + sign), and by using the row of icons toward the bottom, see thumbnails of the videos you’ve posted, saved as drafts, reposted, bookmarked, and liked.

Create a Video

The brief tour we’ve just given will let you enjoy TikTok as a user. You’ll get more familiar with some of the additional viewing options as you play with the app. However, the value of TikTok isn’t just the ability to watch videos from friends and other creators; creating your own videos and posting them to the app is the other key to using the platform to maximum benefit.

You start by hitting the “+” icon at the bottom of your For You page. After that, here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll see and what you can do on the “Creator” page to make your first video.

1. There’s a row above the big button toward the bottom that lets you select whether you want to create a video of 15 seconds or less, 60 seconds or less, or 10 minutes or less. You can also choose to take a photo or create a text slide.
2. The thumbnail to the left of the big button (as well as a smaller button at the top) lets you choose to add sound (essentially, a music background), and the thumbnail to the right of the big button lets you import video or photos from your camera roll.
3. The row of icons on the right-hand side of the Creator screen allows you to (in order) switch between the front and back cameras; turn the flash on and off; speed up or slow down the recording speed, optimize lighting and color; add all sorts of TikTok “filters”; and set a start timer to let you record hands-free.
4. Make your choice of video length (for the rest of this section, we’ll assume that you’re making a video), and hit the big button to start recording. Tapping it again will stop the recording; you can resume filming by tapping it once more.
5. When done recording, click the checkmark to see the Editing screen with a preview of what you’ve shot.
6. On that screen there are more editing tools on the right-hand menu; many duplicate the ones we’ve discussed on the Creator screen, but there are lots of extra editing features you can explore and use as well. Most of them are accessible from the Editing screen, reached by tapping the Edit icon (the screen with left and right arrows near the top).
7. When you’re satisfied, click “Next.” That takes you to a page where you can craft the post that will contain your video, and then either save it to your drafts or post it on TikTok.

That’s only a quick tour, of course, but it should get you started. And if you get frustrated while trying to find a TikTok feature or edit your TikTok video, remember: experimenting is half the fun!