Apple Blocks U.S. iOS Users From Accessing Non-U.S. ByteDance Apps Amid New TikTok Divestment Rules

Even as TikTok now operates in the United States under new American-led ownership, Apple has implemented new technical barriers that bar iOS users physically located in the U.S. from downloading any other apps developed by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance.

ByteDance owns a sprawling portfolio of products spanning social media, entertainment, artificial intelligence, and multiple other industries. Its largest offering is Douyin, the Chinese domestic version of TikTok, which counts more than 1 billion monthly active users, the vast majority based in mainland China. For years, iPhone users anywhere in the world could download these China-focused ByteDance apps without a VPN, as long as they held a valid App Store account registered to the Chinese region.

That long-standing access has now ended. Starting in late January 2025, U.S.-based iPhone users with Chinese-region App Store accounts began reporting unexpected new blocks when attempting to download apps built by ByteDance. WIRED has independently confirmed that even users with fully active, valid Chinese App Store accounts cannot download or update ByteDance-owned Chinese apps on any Apple device located within the United States.

Users attempting to access the restricted apps are met with a pop-up notification that reads, “This app is unavailable in the country or region you’re in.” The restriction currently appears to exclusively target apps owned by ByteDance, and does not extend to apps built by other Chinese technology companies.

Both Apple and ByteDance have declined to comment on the new restrictions. TikTok USDS, the joint venture that now controls TikTok’s U.S. operations, also did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

The timing and technical details of the new blocks strongly tie the change to the divestment agreement TikTok reached in January 2025, which separated TikTok’s U.S. operations from Chinese ownership. That agreement was a direct response to the 2024 federal TikTok ban law passed by Congress, which also prohibits Apple, Google, and other platforms from distributing any other apps that are majority-owned by ByteDance. The law, officially named the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, explicitly bans any company from “distributing, maintaining, or updating” any ByteDance majority-controlled app “within the land or maritime borders of the United States.”

The law was primarily targeted at TikTok, which boasts more than 100 million U.S. users and has been the center of years of national security debate in Washington over potential risks tied to its Chinese ownership. But ByteDance owns dozens of other apps, many of which had already been removed from Apple and Google’s U.S. app stores in prior months. Now, the scope of the ban has expanded to reach even apps that were never officially designed for U.S. consumers, including Douyin, AI chatbot Doubao, and digital fiction platform Fanqie Novel.

New Restrictions

WIRED gathered dozens of user reports from Chinese social media platforms from users who are either residing in or visiting the U.S., all confirming they have been blocked from downloading or updating popular ByteDance-owned apps. While these apps are also unavailable on the U.S. Google Play Store, the change is far less impactful for Android users, who face far fewer barriers to sideloading apps from sources outside Google’s official store.

“Every single ByteDance app appears to be blocked, Douyin included,” tech creator Xiao Peng Digital wrote on social media on January 28. He also shared a screen recording showing his contact’s phone failing to complete an update for the Doubao app while located in the U.S., asking, “Is this connected to the whole TikTok situation?”

Up until this past Wednesday, when a user hit the block for a region-unavailable ByteDance app, Apple’s pop-up included a “Learn More” button that linked to an official Apple Support webpage. As of publication, the link no longer works, but an archived copy of the page shows it was first published in January 2025, and it outlines Apple’s decision to remove TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps from its U.S. App Store earlier that month. After WIRED reached out to Apple to ask about the non-functioning link, the “Learn More” button was removed entirely from the block notification.

The archived page reads: “Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others—will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.”

As of this Thursday, high-profile ByteDance apps including TikTok, popular video editor CapCut, and Instagram-style social platform Lemon8 remain available on the U.S. App Store. All three are covered by the January 22 divestment deal that transferred TikTok’s U.S. business to an investor group led by Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX. The completion of that divestment deal lines up exactly with Apple’s rollout of blocks for the rest of ByteDance’s app portfolio.

A September executive order from President Trump extended the deadline for the TikTok ban-or-divest mandate to January 23, 2026. One day before that original 2025 deadline, TikTok publicly announced it had reached a divestment agreement, noting that “the safeguards provided by the Joint Venture will also cover CapCut, and Lemon8, and a portfolio of other apps and websites in the U.S.” The announcement never explicitly clarified whether all other ByteDance apps would be included in the ownership transfer. Just a few days after the deal was announced, users began reporting they could no longer download Douyin within the U.S.

Apple’s New Geoblocking Framework

The new blocks on ByteDance app downloads in the U.S. highlight how Apple has increasingly leaned on technical tools to split up regional versions of the App Store.

For decades, Apple’s primary method of enforcing geographic app restrictions was tied to the region a user registered their Apple ID to. For example, to hold an Apple account registered in China, a user typically needs a Chinese phone number, payment method, and billing address. But once the account was properly registered, users could download Chinese-market apps no matter where they traveled in the world.

In recent years, however, Apple has built far more advanced systems to pinpoint the physical location of App Store users. Back in 2023, tech outlet 9to5Mac reported that Apple devices had rolled out a new under-the-hood system called “countryd” that calculates a user’s exact location using multiple data points, including current GPS coordinates, the country code tied to a connected Wi-Fi router, and SIM card region information.

Industry observers have theorized the new geolocation system was first developed to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which went into effect in 2024 and required Apple to allow EU-based users to download apps from third-party app marketplaces. While Apple complied with the rule, it restricted access to third-party app stores exclusively to users physically located within EU territory.

Friso Bostoen, an assistant professor of law at Tilburg University who studies the impact of EU regulations on big tech, says the exact technical mechanism Apple uses to enforce iPhone app geoblocking is not public. “Presumably, there’s some on-device processing that checks, ‘This phone is physically inside EU borders, so you get an eligibility green check mark,’” Bostoen explained. He added that per Apple’s public policy, if the device detects an EU-based user has stayed outside the region for more than 90 days, that third-party app store eligibility is revoked.

The new ByteDance app blocks in the U.S. follow the same geoblocking model that was first tested for the EU’s third-party app store rules, Bostoen notes. Some ByteDance users have reported they can work around the new blocks by using a virtual private network (VPN) to fake their device’s location, but these workarounds are not 100% reliable.

Apple’s App Store legal terms explicitly state that “Apple may use the IP address of your internet connection to approximate your location in order to determine whether certain apps that are subject to legal restrictions in some regions can be made available to you.” Checks of online archives of the App Store terms show this specific line was added in late January 2025, just after Apple first started rolling out the ByteDance app blocks in the U.S.

So far, Apple has rarely actually used these new geoblocking capabilities to restrict app access for users. But Bostoen warns the change could have broader ripple effects if geoblocking becomes Apple’s standard method of enforcing app availability rules. “However, you could think about this having some wider spillover effects if this becomes the more general way of ensuring that apps that shouldn't be available indeed aren't available,” Bostoen said. “If Apple gets more sophisticated about blocking access in a way that cannot simply be circumvented with a VPN, obviously citizens in those places are now left with much less liberty.”