Tiktok has dominated the short form video market from a long time and other platform like Instagram and YouTube copied the popularity of such short video content and integrated this type of content in their apps as Reels & Shorts. Now it looks like Tiktok is trying to copy the Instagram and will be soon launching its own photo sharing platform.

I usually post Google related stuff on this blog, so posting about Tiktok is a little bit weird. But anyway, waiting for Google's this week of app updates, I decided to decompile Tiktok apk to see what is going on there. It is banned in my country, India, so it's not like I use it regularly :p. 

So after pulling the APKs from apkmirror. I did the usual decompilation process to compared it  with an older version. Then I came across about this new "Tiktok Photos" platform. The latest Tiktok version is 33.8.4 (com.zhiliaoapp.musically) in which I found all the stuff.

If you are a Tiktok user, you may be well aware of a feature that allows users to post pictures as videos. They appear like regular videos in user feed. You can share multiple photos and users can slide through pictures to see then, just like Instagram. This might not be the best way to share pictures with everyone, so Tiktok decided to create a completely new & separate app called "Tiktok Photos".  Here are some strings from the new version of Tiktok app -

<string name="k0l">Open TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0m">Get TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0n">Share this post to TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0o">Share</string>
<string name="k0p">Your post has been shared to TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0q">TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0r">On TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0s">Share to TikTok Photos</string>
<string name="k0u">Reach other like-minded people who enjoy photo posts.</string>
<string name="k0v">Share photo posts to TikTok Photos</string>

Above strings clearly hints toward a new app called "Tiktok Photos" and states about sharing photos to Tiktok Photos and reach other like-minded people who enjoy photo posts. Tiktok will likely show all these strings on a page to the user which will inform them about the new photo sharing platform and let them open Tiktok Photos or install Tiktok Photos.

Other than this code I was able to access some more text which clearly tells about the launch of the new platform -

n1:text="Sync Your posts to TikTok Photos"
n1:text="TikTok Photos will be launched soon, we hope to help you gain new audiences in the new app \n\n If the switch is on, we'll sync your public photos to the new app, whether you close the pop-up or not.%s"

Above strings indicates toward syncing your posts from Tiktok to Tiktok Photos along with "Tiktok Photos will be launched soon...". The posts which Tiktok is talking about here may be the old photos which you have posted on Tiktok already and new ones which you might post through the Tiktok app instead of the Tiktok Photos app. Although this will be optional as user user can turn off the photo sharing with a toggle. Tiktok also wants you to gain more audience through the Tiktok Photos app :p

And in the end, along with all these strings, Tiktok app also included the icon of the new Tiktok Photos app which have the same color scheme as original Tiktok app icon, here is how it looks -

This is all about it, there is no info when it will be launched and in which regions. This will be available on Android and iOS for sure but the same can't be said about a web version.

There is another new feature which is coming to Tiktok app is the ability to mute accounts. These are the strings from the app which gives some info about the feature - 

• Their posts won’t appear in your Friends feed
• Their posts won’t appear in your feeds
• Muted their posts
• Accounts you mute will appear here. Posts uploaded by accounts you mute will not appear in your “For You”, “Following”, and “Friends” feeds.
• %1$s’s posts won’t appear in your feeds. You can unmute their posts from their profile, or your followers or friends list.
• %1$s’s posts won’t appear in your Friends feed. They will still appear in your For You and Following feeds. You can unmute their posts from your friends list.
• Mute %1$s’s posts?
• You have reached the maximum number of accounts you can mute. You can manage this in Settings > Content preferences > Muted accounts.
• Mute their posts
• Unmute their posts
• Their posts have been muted in Friends feed

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