TikTok Confirms New Instagram-Like App Is Coming Soon

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(Credit: Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images)

TikTok plans to release a new photo-sharing app called TikTok Notes “soon.” That’s according to multiple TikTok users who received an in-app pop-up message telling them that their current and future photo posts on TikTok will soon be added to TikTok Notes.

The message has a slider button that allows users to opt-out of syncing existing and future TikTok photo posts to the new app.

News of TikTok’s foray into a dedicated photos app was previously leaked last month. The leaks had suggested the app might be called TikTok Photos, and showed a logo in the style of TikTok’s original that consists of a red “P” and another cyan mark. The leaks also revealed that TikTok would sync users’ photos to its new app, and they would have to opt-out as opposed to opt-in to their posted photos being shared to the new platform.

At time of writing, both photos.tiktok.com and notes.tiktok.com show the previously leaked “P” logo in the upper browser tab area, but the landing page for both show what appears to be a placeholder image and a new name and logo. The landing pages show a new logo for TikTok Notes, which consists of four green arrowhead-like marks pointing at each other.

TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch Monday that it is launching a new app for photos, but didn’t address whether the company has landed on calling it TikTok Photos, TikTok Notes, or something else. Given the publicly shared pop-up message, however, it’s likely it will be called TikTok Notes.

“As part of our continued commitment to innovating the TikTok experience, we’re exploring ways to empower our community to create and share their creativity with photos and text in a dedicated space for those formats,” a TikTok representative told the outlet in a statement.

Despite being widely known as a vertical video app in the US, TikTok released a “Photo Mode” back in 2022 that allows users to post photos in a carousel format. In its photo mode, users could also add text captions up to 2,000 characters in length.

TikTok and any spinoff apps it creates, including Notes or Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, could still be banned in the US, however. The Senate still has to vote on whether TikTok poses enough of a threat to national security to bar it from the app’s millions of US users.