10 Of The Best Hidden Features On TikTok You Need To Know

Is TikTok getting banned in the United States? Honestly, it's hard to say at this point. While President Joe Biden did sign a bill effectively banning the app (ByteDance must divest within a given amount of time or risk having the app removed entirely), there's a good chance it will face a lengthy battle in the courts. This means that for the time being, TikTok is still around for everyone to enjoy — but you could be enjoying it a lot more if you fully utilized the social media platform to its greatest potential.

Generally speaking, TikTok is pretty intuitive. You can follow whatever accounts you want and simply scroll through videos to amuse yourself or learn about important topics around the globe. It's even pretty simple to start filming content from your smartphone and upload it. People can actually make a lot of money on TikTok if they qualify for certain programs, so it's definitely worth it to try to develop a sizable following. However, even individuals who have used TikTok for years might be missing out on important features that could make the whole experience far better.

Similar to how social media platforms like Snapchat have hidden features that can change the way you use them, TikTok is loaded with helpful tools that aren't heavily advertised. Whether you're a casual user or someone trying to make a living as a content creator, these features can streamline your experience a great deal, so they're worth looking into.

One of the handiest things about TikTok is that you can record and edit videos in the app. There's no need to use third-party sites or other apps if you don't want to, especially if you aren't doing anything all that complex. However, as you record your video, you may realize you've used the dreaded "millennial pause," where you don't immediately start talking at the beginning of the clip. Or perhaps you thought you stopped recording but didn't press hard enough, so the video drags on longer than you'd like. Do you have to go back and record the whole clip from scratch?

Nope! After you've recorded your video and you're in the editing phase, look to the right-hand corner of your screen. While the video above shows an "Adjust clips" icon, the app has been updated on both iOS and Android, and the new icon is a rectangle in the center with arrows on both sides. Click that, and you'll be taken to a screen where you can further edit each individual clip, including shortening them if need be. That way, you can remove any unwanted pauses within your videos.

This feature also allows you to do all kinds of other cool things with your videos. For example, you can rearrange your clips if you want. Maybe you forgot to record something until the very end of the video. You can leave it as is until you get to the "Adjust Clips" feature, and then you can shift it to where it better fits within the rest of your content. You'll feel like a genuine editor, and your videos will pop more on the platform.

Slideshows on TikTok are extremely popular. Instagram Reels is a good TikTok alternative in case the app does end up being banned, but that logic also works in reverse, and TikTok can also be a useful place for people to simply upload photos to show their followers. Slideshows can present a variety of products from someone's shop or provide a carousel to show off all the photos you took on your vacation. TikTok has a slideshow feature that makes it easy to upload a bunch of pictures at once where they automatically cycle through for whoever's watching, but if you want a bit more control over your slideshow experience, there is a workaround. 

No matter what operating system you're using, you can simply select "Effects" from the recording screen and then choose "Green Screen." This allows you to upload whatever photo you want as the background. However, you don't have to be in the video, so you can get out of frame and hit "Record" to create a video of the photo in question. This way, you can keep the slideshow on the image for however long you want, which may be advantageous if you're uploading memes or photos displaying text. 

When you're ready to go to the next image, just hit "Green Screen" again and choose the next picture you want in the line-up. By the end of all this, you'll have a slideshow that works exactly how you want it to. 

TikTok is just as much about discovering new music and sounds as it is about videos. This is partly why TikTok teamed up with Spotify to make it easier to search for songs you discover on the former and listen to it in their entirety on the latter. A good piece of audio can go viral,just like a video, as other people use the sound you started. And in order to give any unique audio you upload the greatest chance at success, you'll want to give it a catchy name that's easily searchable.

After you upload your video, you can click on the audio icon on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. This will take you to another page showing all the videos that have used the audio. The top of the screen will display the title of the audio, which will probably be something like "Original Sound." It's not all too memorable, but you can click the pencil icon next to the default title, allowing you to name it whatever you want.

Here's the kicker: Audio names can only be retitled once. Don't go for a joke name and expect to change it to something serious later. If you're a musician and you just uploaded one of your songs to TikTok, you'll likely want to have the audio name be the title of the song as well as your or your group's name. The goal is to include enough keywords so that someone searching for that audio will be capable of finding it pretty quickly.

GIFs are a great way to convey information to a friend or express a humorous reaction on social media. It should come as no surprise that there are many ways to make your own animated GIFs, and TikTok makes it easy to get in on the fun. You don't need to download a TikTok and bring it to some sketchy third-party site in order to accomplish this; TikTok has a GIF-making feature right there in the app.

After you find a TikTok you would like to use as a GIF, go to the "Share" feature. This will provide an assortment of options for all the places you can share the video, and you may need to scroll to the right for a bit to find "Share as GIF." It'll take a few seconds to convert the video into a GIF, but afterward, you'll have a choice of whether to text it directly to someone or upload it to another social media platform. You can also simply save the GIF to your phone to use it whenever you want at a later time.

It's fast and easy. Plus, you never know when a good reaction GIF is going to come in handy. Now you can be prepared for whatever news your friends might text you with numerous GIFs at your disposal.

This tip is mostly for people using TikTok to post their own content. Uploading a lot of videos, especially multiple per day, requires a lot of storage on your phone. There are numerous tips and tricks to declutter your smartphone and free up space, but the fact remains that posting all the time means TikTok alone will take up a sizable chunk of your storage space. There are only so many apps and old photos you can delete before you run out of options, but you shouldn't do anything else until you clear TikTok's cache.

From your profile page, go to "Settings and Privacy." Scroll down until you reach a section labeled "Free up space." You may be surprised to see how much data the TikTok cache alone takes up on your phone. A TikTok cache is good for storing data to make the app run faster, but over time, it can grow out of control and clog up the system. All you have to do is hit "Clear" next to "Cache," and it'll be wiped instantly, potentially freeing up a ton of space on your phone.

While you're there, you may find a section underneath "Cache" called "Downloads." This consists of storage space for stickers, effects, and other items you may have gotten from the app, but you can download all those again if you need them. You can clear this, too, if you want, and suddenly, you'll have room to download that new app you want.

Scrolling mindlessly on TikTok is part of the app's appeal; however, if you spend a significant portion of time on the platform, you may grow tired of always encountering the various widgets on the screen. On any given video, you'll find the items on the right-hand side of the screen, allowing you to like, comment, or follow the person who uploaded the video. There are also items on the bottom that have the name of the account as well as a video description and any relevant hashtags the user provided. It's a bit of screen overload, but there's actually a useful hack for making it all go away.

If you want to remove all those icons, you just need to press down on your screen for a couple of seconds. A display will pop up with options like sharing the video or saving it to your phone. You'll also find an option labeled "Clear display." When you press this, all of the icons go away. If you want them to come back because you decided you want to comment on this video, you just need to look toward the bottom right-hand corner of the screen that'll have a little square. Click this, and everything will return, good as new.

Unfortunately, this doesn't remove the icons when you swipe to the next video. You'll need to go to "Clear display" once again to make everything look more organized. However, if you're trying to watch something that contains a lot of text within the video itself, removing all of those items makes it a lot easier to focus on the content.

One great thing about TikTok (and the information superhighway in general) is that it connects people from different walks of life all over the globe. You could make a video in the United States, and it can be seen by people in Ireland, South Africa, Australia — virtually anywhere there are humans (provided their country hasn't already banned the app). It's great to see how we're all not so different, but as you make videos, you may receive comments in other languages other than your own. Before you bust out Google Translate (which also has plenty of features you should know about), you should know you can translate right there, in the TikTok app.

When you get a comment that needs to be translated, you just press down on it for a couple of seconds. A menu will appear, with one of the options being "Translate." That's it! The comment will automatically be translated into your native language so that you know what others are saying and can respond if you feel like it. If you want even more control over your translation settings, you can go into "Settings & Privacy" and go to "Language." This allows you to alter the default language you see on the app, as well as whether you want to automatically translate posts you come across in other languages. It's one small step to bringing people a little closer together.

The TikTok algorithm is pretty incredible. After watching a few videos, it gets a sense of the type of content you're interested in seeing more of and serves it to you. Of course, nothing's perfect, and you may still come across videos you'd prefer not to watch. There is a way to block pesky user accounts on TikTok if there's a specific person you no longer want to see, but maybe you want to adjust your "For You Page" (FYP) so the algorithm knows there are types of videos you want to see less of. There's a way to do that, too.

Similar to the "Clear display" option, you just need to press down and hold on the given video you no longer wish to see on your FYP. You'll have an array of choices pop up yet again, only this time you want to select "Not Interested." When you click that, the video will instantly be removed. Not only will this remove that video from your rotation, but it should also get rid of videos like it, so make sure it's definitely something you won't want to see in the future. In the event you encounter another video on the same topic, you can repeat these steps to help train the algorithm better on what content most appeals to you and what doesn't.

It may be called "social" media, but that doesn't mean you have to make every single detail about your account public. The longer you're on TikTok, the more videos you'll inevitably "like," and the entire list will be available from your profile for you to look back on whenever you want. However, if your liked videos are set to "Everyone," then anyone who visits your profile can see those videos, too, and you may not want the world to know just how many cute corgi videos you like on a daily basis.

For this feature, you'll need to head to "Settings & Privacy." From there, you'll press "Privacy," and you'll receive a treasure trove of options to make your overarching TikTok experience perfect for your needs. You may need to scroll down to find "Liked videos," but from there, you can choose whether they can be viewed by everyone or just you. While you're in this setting, you may want to adjust some of the other features, such as determining who's allowed to send you direct messages and whether you want individuals in your phone contacts to have your account recommended to them.

People who are trying to become content creators may want to make themselves a bit more accessible to the world so that their videos reach a wider audience. However, if you just want to scroll through corgi videos to your heart's content, it's understandable if you want to stay a little more hidden.

Would you watch a 10-minute TikTok? While the platform used to emphasize shorter videos, it's recently gotten into the long-form game. Content creators have even been encouraged more to work on longer videos because now, only videos that are longer than 60 seconds can be monetized. This allows influencers to go more in-depth on certain topics, but you only have so much time in the day. If you don't feel like watching the full 60 second or more video, there's a way to get all of the information much faster.

Once again, you need to press down on the video for a couple of seconds. You'll go back to the menu we've used before, but this time you're looking for "Playback speed." You'll be presented with a few options, with "Normal" being the default selection. However, you can speed up the given video by "1.5" or "2." If you watch it at twice the speed, that means you can get through a 60-second video in only 30 seconds. Or, if you encounter a dreaded 10-minute TikTok, you can speed through it in half the time while still absorbing all of the pertinent details.

Conversely, you can also slow down the video to go at half-speed. This might be good if you want to watch a video about something you're interested in, but the creator is perhaps speaking a little too quickly. It's easy to spend an hour or longer on TikTok every day, so if it's consuming that much of your waking hours, it makes sense to customize some of the features to work to your advantage and reclaim some of your time.