TikTok Launches New Desktop Experience With Floating Player and More

TikTok, which is navigating troubled waters right now with an impending US ban, is launching a new version of its website with various new features to improve the desktop viewing experience. There’s a new floating player on Chromium-based browsers, a Collections feature to organize videos into playlists, and more.

“While TikTok is known and loved as a mobile-first platform, we know there are times when desktop viewing is more convenient,” the company said today. Overall, the company aims to bring the desktop experience more in line with the mobile experience, and this is probably something Instagram should do as well.

Besides the new floating video player and Collections feature I mentioned earlier, the TikTok web app is getting a refreshed For You feed, a new Explore tab, and a full-screen horizontal view for gaming live streams. The company also mentioned an “optimized modular layout” with a repositioned navigation bar and a “more immersive” viewing experience.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, deserves credit for popularizing a vertical video format that was quickly imitated by Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. While many people may think that TikTok videos reshaped Internet culture in a negative way, the app’s addictive algorithm is also what makes the platform pretty unique… and powerful. This is one of the reasons why TikTok may soon be banned for good in the US over fears about its algorithm being manipulated for propaganda purposes.