How to Create an App Like TikTok (Plus Experts’ Advice)

US$27.5 million. That’s what TikTok influencers like the D’Amelio sisters earn, showcasing the lucrative potential of a social media app.

If you envision creating your own digital gold mine, such as an app like TikTok, focusing on app development is non-negotiable.

A successful TikTok-like app needs engaging features like video editing tools and augmented reality filters. Meanwhile, a captivating user interface paired with a sound monetization strategy can attract and retain users, paving the way to app success.

This guide is your blueprint for mastering mobile app development and building an app that users will be delighted (and addicted) to use.

Your guide on how to create a video-sharing app like Tiktok

• How did TikTok rise to fame and fortune?
• What makes TikTok unique?

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1. Research the DNA of a viral app
2. Define your MVP’s essential features for maximum impact
3. Identify key characteristics to make your app a user favorite
4. Choose the right tech stack for a seamless performance
5. Design the user interface and bring your ideas to life
6. Develop your Tiktok-like app with your dream team
7. Launch your app and capture the spotlight

But before we explore the steps further, let’s first understand TikTok’s success and how to replicate it as you develop your app idea.

How did TikTok rise to fame and fortune?

TikTok’s meteoric rise in the social media landscape can be attributed to its innovative blend of short-form video content, creative editing tools, and a strong emphasis on community interaction.

One of the standout features is the algorithm-driven “For You” page, which curates content tailored to individual user preferences, keeping them engaged and coming back for more.

@lewis

@realcodiesanchez 🤝 The School of Greatness – you won’t want to miss today’s episode! #money #wealth #moneytok #moneytips #millionaire #wealthy #rich #makemoney

♬ original sound – lewishowes – lewishowes

I’ve never hung out on TikTok (so you kind of can guess my age!), but when I dipped my toes to check some trending posts, I couldn’t help but scroll endlessly and mindlessly. The algorithm knows what to feed me, which keeps me hooked for half an hour.

What makes TikTok unique?

TikTok has carved out a niche for itself with several unique features that set it apart from other social media apps. The short-form video format allows for quick, digestible content that users can easily consume on the go.

Features like the duet option allow users to collaborate on videos easily, while reaction filters add an extra layer of fun by letting viewers interact creatively with content. These features boost engagement and make the app a hit among creators and viewers alike.

@kellycwatchwithme

#duet with @xtamaraf0x #fyp I am American, but we have distinct #educational gaps in certain subjects. I was chastised for #teaching my class how to read #analog clocks. I stand by my decision. They need to know how to tell time as a life skill. I also taught cursive, by choice. #tellingtime #clock #teacher #elementaryschool #teachersoftiktok

♬ original sound – Tamara Fox

This ability to create and share relatable, entertaining content has been a significant factor in TikTok’s success. Let’s crunch some numbers here and see how TikTok is doing in terms of market share and reach.

Key statistics and user engagement on social media platforms

• 💡 TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, making it one of the most popular social media platforms globally.
• 💡 On average, users spend about 95 minutes per day on TikTok, indicating high engagement levels
• 💡 TikTok’s engagement rate surpasses other social media platforms, with users spending more time on the app and interacting with content more frequently.

These statistics highlight TikTok’s dominance in the social media space. Now let’s move on to the meatiest part of the article on how to create a similar app.

1. Research the DNA of a viral app

To build an app like TikTok, step into the first part of the app development process with specific research.

You want to optimize your TikTok app development cost and align it with user expectations in the short-form video. Analyze other social media platforms, such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, for feasibility and uniqueness.

As our CEO, Michael MacRae, puts it,

“Your competitors are missing key functionality that your users want or aren’t servicing a particular subset of users. They may even be ineffectively marketing their products.

Here’s how to jumpstart this process:

• ✅ Identify your target audience. Perhaps an underserved group like older users or educational content seekers to clarify your app’s purpose. This focus simplifies user acquisition and shapes your narrative.
• ✅ Understand content habits. Is it quick entertainment like TikTok or skill-building like Udemy or Masterclass? This insight informs your app’s user interface and boosts user interactions and engagement.
• ✅ Offer unique value. Surpass TikTok with advanced video editing tools, focus on niche content, integrate interactive live streaming, or introduce a strong monetization model.
• ✅ Consider augmented reality features to enhance appeal. TikTok’s success stemmed from its embrace of viral, shareable, short-form content. This ability to create and share relatable, entertaining content has been a significant factor in TikTok’s success. TikTok users engage with features like live streaming and video editing tools, enhancing their interactive and creative experience.

To help you keep the ball moving, you can check this market research template on Canva that you can fill out.

Blue and White Modern Market Research Presentation by Krisette Lim

Your app can stand out in the market by targeting specific demographics or content while enhancing popular features. As they say, “There’s rich in niche.” Precision in addressing these aspects ensures that your app meets unmet market needs.

Speaking of features, this brings me to my next point.

2. Define your MVP’s basic features for maximum impact

To build a successful video-sharing app like TikTok, start by defining your minimum viable product (MVP). Focus on essential features that promote community and creativity. This simplified version lets you test core functionalities, gather user feedback, and make improvements as you go.

Focus on key aspects like user profiles for personalization, video creation tools, and interactive social media platforms. Here’s an overview of what to prioritize:

Feature	Description	Importance for Engagement
Video Recording	Allows users to create and upload short videos	High
Video Editing Tools	Offers basic editing options like filters, text, and speed adjustments	High
Music Integration	Enables users to add popular music to their videos	Medium
User Management	Facilitates account management including follows, profiles, and comments	High
Social Sharing	Encourages sharing videos across platforms to increase visibility	Medium
Engagement Features	Includes likes, comments, and hashtags to foster interaction	High
Push Notifications	Keeps users engaged with updates about likes, comments, and new content	High

You can work with your app design and development team to nail these MVP features. To gain insights on working with an app development team, I reached out to Brian Wong, our senior product manager, who emphasized the importance of their role.

“You should always involve your product manager in research, consulting, and planning. If you think of an agency as just a place where you hand off features for development, let me tell you why the best agencies, like ours, stand out—it’s because we have product managers to guide you through the process.”

This MVP approach ensures you gather valuable user feedback on core features, enabling ongoing refinement.

So, whether you work with an in-house team or external app developers, keep an eye on user behavior and industry trends to guide your journey from MVP to market leader.

3. Identify key characteristics to make your app a user favorite

When considering how to create an app like TikTok, focus on three main pillars: security, stability, and scalability.

Baseline traits	Description	Importance
Security	Protects user data and complies with data protection regulations.	Builds trust and confidence among users, essential for user acquisition.
Stability	Ensures seamless user experience during peak times.	Vital for maintaining app performance and meeting high user expectations for smooth operation.
Scalability	Allows the app to grow with increasing user demand.	Prevents downtime and app crashes, supporting growth and feature expansion.

Let me go through them one by one:

1. Security: Builds trust and confidence in your social media app

Security is critical in social media app development. You need to protect user data and comply with general data protection regulations. To do this, you can use strong encryption to keep information safe and perform regular security checks. This helps build trust with users, just like TikTok does with its secure platform.

Why is this important, you might ask. Well, 81% of users believe the way a company treats their personal data indicates how it views them as customers. So, if you want to acquire app users, investing in strong security measures will add extra points for you to win their hearts.

2. Stability: Gives stellar app user experience

Stability ensures a seamless user experience, even during peak times. To maintain app performance, your software development team should prioritize load testing and efficient coding practices. This is an integral part of Android app and iOS development, where user expectations for a smooth experience are high.

When I asked our iOS developer, Adonis Dumadapat, for advice on tech stack choices, he shared a crucial point, “I’ve heard a lot of companies say, “Let’s use the latest technology,” but that’s not always the best choice. Prioritize stability over speed.”

This brings me to my next point, scalability.

3. Scalability: Opens the door for your app’s growth

Scalability allows your video-sharing application to grow with user demand. By designing a scalable architecture and  leveraging microservices, you can accommodate increasing numbers of users. This will support features like video uploading, video preview, and virtual gifts.

If your app isn’t scalable, this would cause frequent downtime because your systems are overloaded, which results in poor user experience and app crashes. Here’s a video from Google Cloud Tech discussing how to build scalable and resilient apps.

Source: YouTube

By addressing these elements, you enable users to create, interact, and engage confidently on your platform, whether a short video app offering music videos and lip sync features or a broader social media platform competing with other social media apps.

Here’s how I can summarize these three important baseline traits:

Developing an app like TikTok is like designing a car where security functions as the locks safeguarding what’s inside. Meanwhile, stability operates as the suspension making sure a smooth journey. Lastly, scalability powers the engine to handle increasing speed and load.

To make sure you achieve scalability at its highest level, the type of tech stack and platforms are crucial considerations. Let’s move on to the next step.

4. Choose the right tech stack and platform for seamless performance

Choosing the right tech stack and platform for a TikTok-like app depends on the target audience you want to serve initially.

Are you team iOS, Android, or hybrid? Swift developers should be on your side if you want to develop a native app for iOS. Meanwhile, Android will require you to work with Kotlin developers.

Here’s a quick comparison of the three platforms and tech stacks.

Feature	Android	iOS	Hybrid
Tech Stack	Java, Kotlin	Swift, Objective-C	JavaScript, HTML5, CSS
Performance	High; varies by device	High and consistent	Moderate; can be slower than native
Development Speed	Moderate; longer due to device fragmentation	Faster; streamlined process	Fastest; single codebase for multiple platforms
Audience Reach	Wider reach globally, especially in Asia and Africa	Strong in North America and Europe	Good reach across platforms
Cost of Development	Lower to Moderate	Moderate to High	Moderate; faster development times
Maintenance	Moderate; requires device testing	Easier; fewer devices to support	Easiest; same code for all platforms
User Experience	Customizable UI, may vary between devices	Consistent UI and user experience	May lack some native features but easier to maintain

Here’s the thing: iOS users spend significantly more on in-app purchases, offering high revenue potential, though the platform holds only 28.58% of the market.

On the other hand, Android dominates with a  70.69% global market share, providing access to a huge user base, particularly in developing markets like India, with a 95.33% share.

Then, there’s the cross-platform strategy of building an app using Flutter or React Native, which allows you to launch on both iOS and Android.

Should you go native or hybrid? It depends on what you want to achieve.

If you go native, you can integrate advanced custom features and maximize Google Cloud messaging in Android app or Apple push notification service for better engagement.

There’s no right or wrong answer here, but the choice of development will always have pros and cons. Here’s what Adonis Dumadapdat, one of our iOS developers, had to say about this:

“Many people take the high-speed approach—developing once and compiling it into both Android and iOS. Yes, you save some money upfront, but in the end, you’ll definitely encounter problems. I can’t say exactly what those problems will be, but they will happen. So, go native.”

Of course, that’s just his opinion, and you have the liberty to take his advice or go for a hybrid app development.

5. Design the user interface and bring your ideas to life

When building an app like TikTok, design is key to captivating users and ensuring they will be delighted to use it. You have two options:

• ✅ DIY with your team
• ✅ Outsource to professionals

While doing it in-house might seem appealing, unless your team has expertise in app development and UI/UX design, it could become a costly experiment. Outsourcing to a professional app development agency ensures you benefit from experience, creativity, and speed.

With experts at the helm, you can focus on other aspects of your business while they handle the complex design and development work. Typically, the app design process will involve the following:

• ✅ Sketches. Simple drafts to outline the layout and core ideas of your app.
• ✅ Wireframes. More detailed representations that map out features and functionality.
• ✅ Finished designs. These are polished designs, ready for testing.

Every great app begins with these foundational stages. A collaborative, feedback-driven approach ensures the app’s design is user-friendly, engaging, and fully functional before launch.

Our Head of Delivery, Maku Montecer, shared his insights on balancing a project’s technical requirements with the need for a user-friendly experience. When I asked him how to ensure the final product delights customers, here’s what he said:

“Once we have a design, I like to show it to random people and ask, “If you saw this, how would you use it?” If they don’t get it, we’re in trouble. But this approach helps us identify potential issues early on and make sure the app is intuitive and user-friendly.”

Imagine trying to cook a complex meal without proper preparation—that’s like designing an app without these steps. The end product may be rushed, unbalanced, or incomplete. Definitely, there’s power in crowdsourced feedback to identify issues early on.

There’s a better way to fast-track the process. In fact, we do things differently with a proprietary method, Baseplate™, which streamlines development.

It’s like a high-quality recipe template—offering flexibility but with pre-built components that reduce production time significantly. This allows app developers to deliver an app that’s scalable and adaptable to your vision.

📣 Ready to take your idea to the next level? Book a discovery call and see how this tailored approach can bring your app to life efficiently.

6. Develop your Tiktok-like app with your dream team

Once your app design is ready, it’s time to dive into the development phase. This is where your TikTok-like app begins to take shape. Open and constant communication at this stage is critical to ensure every feature aligns with your vision.

Here’s where a strong development framework can make all the difference. If you’re using Baseplate™, you’re in for a faster, smoother experience.

Baseplate™ uses native languages—Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android—which ensures top-tier performance and seamless integration for your app.

 

The development process thrives on agile methodology, which is built around flexibility and adaptability. This approach allows your team to work in short sprints, constantly collecting feedback and making iterative improvements.

Key benefits of agile development include:

• 🚀 Flexibility. Easily adapt to new trends, user behavior, or feedback without disrupting the development process. The agile method allows your app to evolve naturally alongside user expectations.
• 🚀 Continuous feedback. Regular check-ins and client feedback loops ensure your app stays on track and aligns with your goals.

I’d like to borrow the words of our Head of Delivery, Maku Montecer, because I see how important it is to have an app development team who knows the ins and outs of the project.

“PMs, PDMs, BAs, and designers all work together on the project, along with one web developer. We’re really hashing out what the requirements are, what the client needs from us, and how we can help them. By doing that, it helps us build a product that’s more cohesive, rather than just solving problems as they arise and ending up with a product that’s not fully refined when we launch.”

Once the development phase is ready, you’re all set for the next and final step.

7. Launch your app and capture the spotlight

Congratulations, your TikTok-like app is ready for launch! But the project doesn’t stop here. In fact, the work continues as you finally launch and say hello the world.

Here’s how to successfully launch, promote, and continually improve your app to captivate users:

1. Publish your app on app stores

To make your iOS and Android debut, you’ll need developer accounts for both the Apple Store and Google Play Store. Ensure your app is compliant with their guidelines for app store submission. Take note: Apple’s process is stricter, so triple-check before submission.

Working with experts—developers, QAs, and product managers—can make this process more efficient. A well-built app with strong quality assurance can get approved faster, allowing you to hit the market sooner.

2. Promote your app on different marketing channels

Once live, focus on app store optimization (ASO) to boost your app’s visibility. An engaging title, strategic keywords, and a compelling description can improve your app’s chances of being discovered. Use app store optimization strategies to drive organic installs.

Next, consider running paid ads or using in-app advertising to expand your reach. You can also promote through social media, influencer marketing, and content marketing. These tactics are critical to getting your app noticed by the right audience.

3. Continuously enhance your app to keep users engaged

Once users start downloading, feedback becomes your most valuable tool. Keep an eye on app store reviews to understand what works and where improvements are needed. This real-time feedback helps you release updates that keep users engaged.

By consistently refining your app—whether adding new features, tweaking in-app purchases, or improving usability—you’ll boost user retention and stay competitive in the app market.

When I interviewed our Head of Delivery, Maku Montecer and asked him what was the biggest misconception about the app development process, here’s what he said,

“I think the biggest misconception is the idea of launching a perfect app. There’s no such thing as a perfect app. There will always be issues, things that break, and odd things that users encounter. But as long as you protect your core concept and ensure that what you want to test works, that’s what matters.

Everything else is secondary—like if a feature to change your birthday isn’t working, that shouldn’t stop users from using your app. Of course, we want to polish our apps, but that shouldn’t be the main focus. You need to ask yourself: What are you offering? What is your core concept? What are you protecting?”

That brings us back to why our product strategist and managers always encourage founders and entrepreneurs to have their MVP app. Along the way, you could always add up features and scale depending on the market demand.

Dreaming of creating an app like Tiktok? Here’s your blueprint

Developing an app like TikTok opens the door to an exciting and competitive space. By following a proven development strategy, you can create an app that stands out, captures user attention, and thrives in the crowded market.

The most effective approach is to collaborate with an experienced app development team to guide you from concept to launch.

There’s no shortcut to success, leveraging a tried-and-true framework like ourBaseplate ™, gives you a clear path to building a scalable app that resonates with users..

At Appetiser, we’ve helped entrepreneurs and founders create billion-dollar apps by following a proven and tested app development process.

If you’re ready to build the next viral sensation like TikTok app, start your journey with a strategic call. This could be day one of launching your dream app.

💡 Special thanks to the following Appetiser Apps team members for contributing valuable insights: Michael MacRae (CEO and co-founder), Maku Montecer (Head of Delivery), Adonis Dumadapat (iOS Developer), Brian Wong (Product Manager)