If you are a TikTok user, you probably know that searching for other users is only available using their names or usernames. But what if you want to find someone that you don’t have his/her username? Maybe you want to check one of his videos without asking him about his profile. Or, you have an account URL that he changed and can’t get the new one. Whatever the case is, there are ways you can use to locate friends or others on the video-sharing app without even knowing about their usernames. So, let’s check below.
Your phone contacts
One of the easiest ways to search for people on TikTok is through your mobile contact list. However, there are two conditions for the user you’re searching to appear.
First, you have to give TikTok access to your mobile number to search for other accounts using their numbers. So, if you link your mobile number to TikTok, other people can use the same method to search for your account. However, you can just link your mobile number to do the search and then change this setting again after you’re done.
The second condition is that the number you’re searching for should allow the same thing. This means his privacy settings should be set to allow others to search for his account using his mobile number.
While you won’t know the privacy settings for the account you’re searching for, you can simply give it a try and do the following steps:
- From the main screen of the TikTok app, click on the “Me” icon.
- Click on the plus icon on the upper left side, then, click on “Find Contacts”.
- The app will direct you to your contacts list. Search for the name you’re looking for and see if you can find an account for this name.
If you can’t see their profile using this method, you can try advanced options such as the reverse phone number lookup. There are many options for that, but please remember, you need to choose the right system. Otherwise, you get nothing as search results as so many apps on the app store or on other platforms just offer fake claims.
Another thing I should mention here, you need to think about the other contact details that the person is using online. So, let’s say for example that the user you’re looking for has more than a cell number, so, you can first uncover that information and use it for a new search. Do, the same with the contact list, just register that new number with a new name and try to synchronize that with the TikTok app. That way, you get more options to discover profiles without the need to know their account username.
Facebook friends
Similar to the previous method, you can find TikTok users using Facebook. Also, using this method has some criteria.
TikTok will connect to your Facebook profile to find users, so, you should allow this connection. The other thing is that TikTok won’t search the whole of Facebook for users. Instead, it only searches for TikTok users listed on your friends list.
If you believe the username you’re looking for is one of your friends on Facebook, then do the following steps:
- From the main screen of the TikTok app, click on the “Me” icon.
Next, click on the icon on the upper left side. From the available options, choose “Find Facebook friends”. - The app will ask for permission to your public Facebook profile. So, allow this permission to be granted and signed to your Facebook.
- On the next screen, you’ll see a list of your Facebook friends who already have a TikTok account. Search for the name you want and click on “Follow” to follow him on TikTok.
While this method is similar to finding friends on your contact list, it offers a larger scope of search as mostly we don’t have the numbers of all our Facebook friends. At the same time, Facebook is a social media platform that many people use, so, it’s more likely to find people on Facebook than on your contacts list. If the friend you searched for doesn’t have a TikTok account, you will find an “Invite” icon next to his name.
However, in both cases, you need to know the name (not the username) of the person you’re looking for. TikTok allows searching in the app itself for people using their names and it tries to match the name you wrote to the username the person chose for himself.
Search using the name
Searching for people on TikTok isn’t an exact word search. Therefore, just guess the name and TikTok will try to find the nearest results to what you typed. To search for people on TikTok, follow these simple steps:
- From the TikTok app’s main screen, click on the search icon (magnifying glass icon).
- On the next screen, write the name you are looking for in the search box.
- Click search and browse the results.
These are all the available options for finding someone’s account on TikTok when you don’t know their username. One last method to mention here is using the QR code. However, this method doesn’t search for people you don’t know. It’s just a way to connect to others.
Scan QR code
For every account, there’s a unique QR code that TikTok creates specifically for this account. To find your QR code, follow these steps:
- From the main screen, click on “Me” on the bottom right side.
- On the next screen, click on the three dots on the top right side.
- This will open the “Settings and Privacy” page. Click on “TikCode”.
- The app will generate your QR code, you can now screenshot it and send it to your friends to add you on TikTok.
On the other side, you can add others by scanning their QR codes. However, they should have their QR codes ready for you to scan. To add others using their QR code, do the following:
- Ask them to generate their QR codes using the previous steps.
- From your TikTok main screen, click on the search icon at the bottom.
- Click on the camera icon on the top right side.
- The app will request permission to your device’s camera, so, allow access to open the camera.
- Put your camera in front of the device with the QR code you want to scan, the app will automatically scan it and direct you to the profile, then, you can follow your friends.
Conclusion
To sum up, these are all the recommended methods you can use to find people on the TikTok app if you don’t know their username. Remember that using your contact list requires others on the app to enable the search for their accounts through their phone number. Whereas using Facebook requires you to have your name on your Facebook friends list. On the other side, using the app search itself matches the name you write with the username as much as possible. Alternatively, you can connect to your friends by scanning QR codes instead of writing names or usernames.
If that doesn’t help, make sure you verify the details you used for the search. There could be a small mistake while typing the information. So, double-check the name of the person you need to locate online. Next, use multiple search options to have the highest chance to see their profile on TikTok.
