First launched in the United States in 2018, the app quickly became the most downloaded social and entertainment app in the world. By 2020, when Americans were looking for ways to

Political shifts and legal hurdles have delayed TikTok's removal, with Biden reportedly kicking the issue to Trump.

TikTok is set to be banned in the US on 19 January after the Supreme Court denied a last ditch legal bid from its Chinese owner, ByteDance. It found the law banning the social media platform did not violate the first amendment rights of TikTok and its 170 million users, as the companies argued.

U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle hailed a ruling by the Supreme Court on Friday that upheld a law that gives popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok until Sunday to be bought by an American company or be banned.

Last April, President Biden signed a law putting TikTok on notice that its days operating in the U.S. were numbered -- unless it could find an American buyer. TikTok sued on the basis of free speech. But last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban and by Sunday the site went down.

President-elect Donald Trump says he plans to issue an executive order that would give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the popular video-sharing platform is subject to a permanent ban in the United States.

With the ban upheld by the Supreme Court and the Biden administration leaving, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is banking on Trump to save the app in the US.

The president-elect Sunday pledged an executive order, hours into his second term, returning access for American users, at least temporarily.

TikTok users will notice a lack of new content from American creators after the app went dark in the United States, but the popular social media video platform remains accessible in Canada.

TikTok's app was removed from prominent app stores on Saturday evening just before a federal law that bans the popular social media platform went into effect.

Trump announced the decision in a post on his Truth Social account as millions of TikTok users in the U.S. awoke to discover they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.