How to View Private TikTok Accounts: 4 Safe and Legal Methods

“That’s my child; I should have the right to know what they are doing on TikTok.” If you have ever found yourself thinking this while struggling to access their private account, you are in good company. 

Many parents share the same frustration, wondering what their kids might be hiding behind those locked profiles.

Naturally, like countless others, you then find yourself looking up how to see a private TikTok account. Dedicated to finally helping you get the answers you need, we have compiled this guide.

Continue reading to discover 4 legitimate methods to gain insight into their private profile, along with risky shortcuts you should avoid.

Understanding How TikTok Privacy Settings Work

TikTok privacy settings allow users to control who can view their profiles and engage with their content. Using these settings, accounts can be set as either public or private. 

In a private TikTok account, visibility is limited; therefore, only approved followers can see the target account’s videos, liked list, followers, following, etc. 

For everyone else, access is limited to only the basic profile elements like the username, profile picture, and bio of the user. 

Not only that, since these settings are flexible, public accounts can also be switched to private at any time. The change immediately restricts non-followers from accessing the user’s new and previously uploaded videos. 

However, existing followers retain their access since they were already approved before the change. 

All in all, TikTok’s policies are created for better user privacy. It is for this reason that you, too, should remain mindful when trying to look up someone’s TikTok private profile.

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Why People Try to View Private TikTok Accounts

Most of the individuals seeking answers on how to see private TikTok accounts can fall into one of these categories.

Parents Wanting to Keep Their Kids Safe

Many parents feel anxious when their child’s TikTok activity is hidden. They worry about who their kids are talking to or the type of content they are sharing. A private profile makes it harder to know if they are staying safe online, which pushes parents to look for ways to see what’s happening.

Friends and Classmates Feeling Left Out

When a friend or classmate keeps their profile private, it can spark curiosity. People wonder if they’re missing inside jokes, personal updates, or content meant only for a select few. The sense of being left out makes them want to take a peek.

Concerns About Risky Behavior

Sometimes, people are motivated by worry. They may suspect that someone close to them is engaging in inappropriate or risky behavior. A private TikTok account can heighten those suspicions, making them want to see what’s really going on.

Businesses and Influencers Looking for Insight

Not every reason is personal. Marketers and influencers sometimes want to observe how private communities interact, what content styles are trending in certain circles, or what competitors are doing behind a locked profile. A private account can look like a source of hidden insights.

How to See a Private TikTok Account: 4 Methods That Work

While you will find many ways to look up a private TikTok account, there are only a few that fall within ethical boundaries. Those four methods have been discussed below in detail alongside their steps and limitations.

1. Send a Follow Request

Sending a follow request on TikTok is the platform’s built-in and legitimate way to ask permission to view a private TikTok account’s content. If the account owner accepts the request, you gain access to their videos and profile details. 

However, if they decline or simply ignore it, you will not. Overall, this method is very appropriate because it respects privacy and follows TikTok rules rather than finding workarounds.

Use these steps to send them a follow request:

1. Open TikTok and look up their username or click on their profile link.
2. On the profile page, click “Follow” under their profile picture.
3. Optionally, write a friendly message if the account allows adding notes with requests.
4. Wait for the account owner to accept your request, and then look through their private TikTok profile.

However, remember that it is highly possible that your request might not be accepted if the user does not know you. Moreover, additional privacy settings, like restricted liked list and followers/following, can still limit visibility after being approved.

2. Request a Mutual Follower

If the direct approach does not work, you can try an indirect method by asking a mutual follower for insight into someone’s private TikTok account. To do so, you need to look for a friend or acquaintance who already follows the target account. 

Since they are approved by the account owner, they can view their posts, likes, and other TikTok activity. Therefore, if they agree to show you the target person’s account, you will know what they are up to. 

Here’s how to view a private TikTok account through a mutual follower:

1. Check any mutual followers who already have access to your target private TikTok account
2. Reach out to the person if you know them personally.
3. Request them to share the user’s content by either downloading it or showing it on their phone.

The method, unfortunately, relies heavily on the strength of your relationship with the mutual follower and their willingness. Their refusal to cooperate can render you unable to view their private TikTok account. Moreover, even if they agree, you would have to ask repeatedly for updates.

3. Search Account on Google

Google stores public user data from TikTok, so you can use Google search to see TikTok accounts that were once public but later became private. 

That is because, regardless of the switch, cached information still appears in search results for some time, allowing you to see screenshots of older videos or other available details.

Just these few steps can help you get some insight into their private TikTok account:

1. Open Google in your browser.
2. In the search bar, type site:tiktok.com/@username, where you will replace “username” with the exact TikTok handle.
3. Look through the results to see cached information still available.

Remember, using this method, the data you find is rather limited because it only includes content that was once public and cached by Google. Therefore, any new videos or other account activity will not be accessible to you.

4. Check Other Social Media Apps

Many people tend to share the same videos and photos across multiple social media platforms. So, there is a possibility that someone with a private TikTok might have posted the same content on a public Instagram or Facebook account.

Even if those accounts are private, you can try to connect with the user there by sending a follow or friend request.

All you need to do is:

1. Use the person’s TikTok handle or full name to look them up on other social media apps.
2. Check whether the discovered accounts are public or private.
3. For private accounts, send a follow or friend request.
4. If the account is public or the request is accepted, you can look through their posts to get an idea of their TikTok activity.

However, a clear limitation of this method is that they might reject your request on other private accounts, too. Additionally, you can have a hard time locating these accounts because of the possibility of different handles in use for each app.

4 Methods You Should Never Use to View Private TikTok Accounts

During your search, you might have found ways asking you to simply create a fake account or use a private TikTok account viewer. However, you must be careful because these seemingly harmless methods breach a user’s privacy and violate TikTok policies.

1. Fake Accounts or Impersonation

Creating a fake profile or impersonating someone the target user knows is sometimes seen as an easy way to bypass TikTok’s private settings and view someone’s account. 

If the account owner is deceived successfully and approves the request, the impersonator gains access to all the user’s content and other activities.

However, the method directly violates TikTok’s community guidelines, which can result in being suspended or permanently banned. Not only that, but if the target user reports the impersonator, they can further face legal action from TikTok for misrepresentation.

Beyond platform rules and policies, this method also raises some serious ethical concerns by disregarding a user’s personal preferences regarding their audience.

2. A TikTok Private Account Viewer

Private TikTok profile viewers are third-party apps that claim to reveal the content from private TikTok accounts. Apparently, they are shortcuts that everyone would like to opt for, but in reality, deception and fraud are all one gets out of these apps. 

Here is how they operate: they ask you to give them a username, then offer a fake preview to convince you to buy a subscription. However, what you get in return are fabricated results, recycled public data, and screenshots from other sources. 

To make matters worse, these apps tend to also steal your credentials and install malware in your phone. 

The stolen data is then mostly sold on marketplaces or used for identity theft and fraud. Above all else, you not only get no solid results but also actively participate in breaching someone’s privacy. 

Therefore, using such methods harms both you and other account owners.

3. Buying Access or Follower Services

Some third-party vendors advertise “access” or “follower” services to help people see private TikTok profiles. The vendors will tell you that you only need to pay a fee, and then you will get a hacked view of the target account or access to fake followers who are already approved by the private account.

But truth be told, these services are highly unreliable and are only exploiting your desire to see their TikTok quickly. Once you have paid, you rarely get what you have paid for. Some even end up scamming you for money, while others sell you fake screenshots that give you no real insight. 

Additionally, using these services also comes with their fair share of ethical issues, like breaking someone’s privacy boundaries.

4. Any Method That Violates TikTok’s Community Guidelines

TikTok’s policies are pretty clear, with users advised not to engage in any deceptive practices, impersonation, data scraping, account hacking, or any other activity that violates someone’s privacy. 

Therefore, only if you have a user’s permission should you see their content. Breaching these rules can easily result in account bans or legal actions depending on how severe the violations for.

Ethically, by using these workarounds, you are disregarding someone’s privacy settings and can damage trust in the long run if they find out.

Common activities to see someone’s private TikTok account that go against community guidelines are phishing for stealing credentials, exploiting app loopholes, hacking or jailbreaking devices to scrape data, buying leaked data, etc.

How to View a Private TikTok Account If You Think It Belongs to Your Child

Things change entirely if it is your child’s private TikTok account that you are trying to see. When such a situation arises that your child is not willing to add you to their account, you can simply use the Xnspy monitoring app. 

The app is designed for parents to get complete visibility into their child’s phone activity, including TikTok.

You only need to gain one-time access to the target device and then install Xnspy. Once installed, the app runs on the phone in stealth mode and makes all TikTok activity available through its web dashboard.

Features that help parents see their child’s private TikTok account are screen time, screen recorder, keylogger, remote alerts, and app blocking. For starters, parents can see whether their child is on TikTok or not by seeing their installed app list and then checking the app’s screen time too.

With these insights at hand, parents can know for sure how long their child is spending on the app. Moreover, since Xnspy’s screen recorder takes screenshots of the child’s active screen every 5-10 seconds, all TikTok private account activity is made visible to the parents.

They can not only see who is in their child’s followers and following list, but also check the kind of content they are posting on their private profile. On the other hand, the keylogger can help parents understand their interactions, search history, and other TikTok activity.

However, if you cannot look through all this data manually, you can set immediate alerts for keywords that you want to receive updates on. By flagging these words, you will get email notifications as soon as the system comes across them.

Then, if you see concerning patterns, inappropriate content, or oversharing of personal details, you can simply block the TikTok app on their phone remotely.

Here is how to view private TikTok accounts using Xnspy:

1. Go to the Xnspy website and subscribe to a price plan that includes all required features.
2. Gain one-time access to the target device after receiving a confirmation email.
3. Install Xnspy on the phone and then grant all requested permissions.
4. Open the web dashboard and see their TikTok private account activity through screen recorder, keylogger, and other features.

FAQs

Do private TikTok accounts appear on the For You page?

No, private TikTok accounts do not appear on the For You page, as this section only promotes content from public profiles. When a TikTok account is private, its visibility is restricted to approved followers, meaning videos are automatically excluded from discovery features like the For You page, search results, etc. Therefore, even if a video performs well among the account’s followers, it will not be pushed to non-followers.

How to see private TikTok accounts if you are blocked?

If you are blocked from a private TikTok account, direct access is impossible through the app. One option is to use Xnspy, a monitoring app that lets parents view their child’s TikTok activity, including private posts, followers, and following, even if blocked. Another method is checking if the person shares the same content on other social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook because many users cross-post videos.

How to see a private TikTok account without following when you only use TikTok on desktop?

If you only use TikTok on desktop, the most reliable way to see a private account without following is through Google search. In case the account was previously public, Google may have cached older versions of the profile or videos. An alternative you might come across is a private TikTok viewer, but these should be avoided since most are scams that steal data, push paywalls, and provide fake results.

Can someone tell if you tried to view their private TikTok account?

No, no one can tell if you tried to view their private TikTok account because TikTok does not notify users when others search for them or attempt to open their profile. All that happens is you see limited information, such as their username, profile picture, and bio, without access to videos or followers. The account owner will only know if you send a follow request, since that action generates a notification. Beyond that, browsing attempts remain invisible.

How to look at private TikTok accounts without installing software?

One way to look at private TikTok accounts without installing any software is by asking a mutual follower who already has access. Since they are approved, they can view the private content and share it with you. However, this method has clear limitations because the mutual follower might refuse, plus you would need to rely on them repeatedly for updates. For parents specifically, a more reliable option is installing Xnspy, which directly shows your child’s private TikTok account and its complete activity.