TikTok DL

A simple command-line tool to download TikTok videos and photo slideshows without watermarks. Just paste in a URL and it handles the rest.

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Requirements

• Python 3.7 or newer
• yt-dlp (the script will install this automatically if it's missing)

That's genuinely it. No accounts, no API keys, nothing weird.

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How to use it

python tiktok_dl.py

You'll get a menu with a few options:

1. Download a video — paste in any TikTok video URL and it downloads it in the best available quality, no watermark
2. Download photos — for slideshow/photo posts, this grabs all the individual images and drops them in a photos/ subfolder
3. Change output folder — by default files go to ~/TikTok Downloads/, but you can point it anywhere
4. Exit — does what it says

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Where do files end up?

By default everything saves to:

~/TikTok Downloads/

Photo slideshows go into a photos/ subfolder inside that. Filenames are formatted as username_videoid.ext so things don't clash if you download a bunch at once.

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URL formats that work

Pretty much any TikTok URL should work:

https://www.tiktok.com/@username/video/1234567890
https://vm.tiktok.com/XXXXXXX/   ← short links work too

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Troubleshooting

"Download failed" error

• Make sure the account is public — private accounts won't work
• Try copying the URL fresh from your browser rather than the share sheet, sometimes those add tracking params that break things

Photos aren't downloading

• If the post is actually a video (not a slideshow), use option 1 instead

yt-dlp errors about format

• Run pip install -U yt-dlp to update it — TikTok changes their stuff pretty often and yt-dlp patches keep up with it

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Notes

This is built on top of yt-dlp which does the heavy lifting. Only download content you have the right to download — respect creators.