If I search someone on TikTok, will they know? Answered!

If you’re a TikTok enthusiast, this question must have crossed your mind while you’re in this digital playground: If I search someone on TikTok, will they know? Now, I’ve been there, caught in the whirlwind of scrolling, wondering whether I was leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs.

If you’ve ever found yourself pondering and worrying about the stealthiness of your TikTok searches, you’re not alone! 

To help you out, we’re unveiling the mysteries behind TikTok’s search dynamics and discover whether your curiosity is a silent ninja or a disco ball on the digital dance floor.

Plus, we’ll show you three workarounds so you can freely look into your fave people’s TikTok accounts without them knowing. Let’s go!

If I search for someone on TikTok, will they know?

Other users can’t access your account’s search history on the platform for privacy reasons. Of course, the same applies to you since you aren’t allowed to view someone’s TikTok search history, or you’ll be violating their right to data privacy.

Therefore, even if you search for someone on TikTok, they won’t know about it unless you or someone who knows tells them. If you look up someone’s account, the platform stores this information under the search bar as part of your “search history.”

You’ll know this is the case because the username you searched for will have a clock icon beside it. It’s a standard icon that many social media and file-sharing apps like Facebook and YouTube use to indicate that it’s an item you’ve searched for recently.

This search history will only appear on your account’s search bar, so you don’t have to worry about other TikTok users getting this information. 

On the other end of the platform, they also don’t have any reason to worry about you accessing their search history because it’s hidden from others.

After all, data privacy laws protect your account activity, and TikTok has to follow them so they can continue conducting their business. Although most countries implement different laws, data privacy is consistent in many parts of the world.

It’s the reason every social media app you use will handle your account information similarly. 

This arrangement makes sense because you can change your privacy settings on TikTok and select the users who can view your profile, followers list, and posts.

As a result, there’s no need to check who searches for you on TikTok because you can make your account private to hide your presence from unwanted users. 

This way, only people you trust, like your friends and family, can visit your profile and see your posts.

However, it’s important to note that although searching for someone on TikTok won’t let them know your search history, they may learn you visited their profile. How they can do this will be discussed later in this post.

Does TikTok notify someone when you search for them?

As mentioned, TikTok doesn’t give users access to another person’s search history on the platform for privacy reasons. 

Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for everyone to get a notification whenever someone searches for their username to find their account.

More importantly, you must understand that searching for someone on TikTok doesn’t mean they should know this information. After all, searching lets you see a list of posts or users related to the keyword you entered on the platform’s search bar.

Since performing this action can produce multiple search results simultaneously, it’s understandable why TikTok won’t notify its users. 

Even if we removed privacy from the equation, it wouldn’t make sense because there’s no way to confirm the search target.

After all, many users share similar account names and usernames, making multiple search results inevitable. Thus, even the people you don’t intend to search for can appear on the list, making a search notification an unreliable feature.

In most cases, the notification will be a false alarm for the other users appearing on the search results list. 

Therefore, implementing this feature is impossible because TikTok can’t confirm who you’re searching for until you select a user from your search results.

So, unless you select a user and visit their profile page, TikTok won’t know they were your search target. By that point, a search notification will be pointless because they already have a feature that lets you see a list of users who viewed your profile.

Plus, this feature isn’t even reliable because it doesn’t show everyone who views your profile page. 

More importantly, visiting a profile page isn’t exclusive to those who search for someone on TikTok, so letting them know about it doesn’t make sense.

For instance, someone can find your account without searching if another user they follow shares your profile or post. Only some people who look up your username or see you in their search results will visit your profile page, not all of them.

As a result, you can’t put people who search for your account and visit your profile in the same category. Privacy aside, it proves that notifying someone about users who search for their account is something that TikTok can’t implement willy-nilly.

Can you search for someone on TikTok without them knowing?

Because nobody but you has access to your search history, you don’t need to do anything special to prevent someone from knowing you searched for them. If you search for someone on TikTok, they won’t know unless you tell them about it. 

They can assume you searched for their account if you visited their profile page, but it’s inconclusive evidence. 

After all, you can visit someone’s profile page without performing a search if you see their post or profile after another user shares it with you.

At best, their guess will be as good as everyone else’s. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about them knowing you searched for their TikTok account unless you want to view their profile anonymously.

In such cases, you can take specific measures to ensure the target user doesn’t learn about your identity. Later in this post, you can look forward to these methods in a dedicated section detailing them.

This limitation extends to people on your “following” and “followers” list, so your relationship status doesn’t affect who can see who searched for whom. 

In other words, you don’t see who searches for you, and others won’t know who you search for.

Guessing whether you searched for them based on specific telltale signs is the best thing someone can do. Otherwise, they must confirm it by accessing your TikTok account, which violates your data privacy if they do it without your consent.

Alternatively, they can change their TikTok account’s privacy and make it private to hide their profile and post from non-followers. This way, they won’t feel anxious about strangers searching for their account on the platform.

If you visit someone’s profile on TikTok, will they know?

Unlike your search history, other users can see whether you visited their profile pages through the “profile view history” feature. As its name suggests, this feature lets you see a list of your profile page’s most recent visitors.

This feature has a bit of history because TikTok removed it before returning it to the platform. 

Because it lets users see their profile visitors, this feature is so divisive that it isn’t popular among those who feel uncomfortable about others knowing their activities.

Upon enabling the “Profile view history” feature, you can see your recent profile visitors in the last thirty days. However, this only includes accounts that visited your profile page while this feature was active.

Therefore, this feature won’t record your profile visitors during its inactivity, even if the visits happened during the last thirty days. Only you can access your account’s profile view list, like your search history.

However, you can only see profile visitors who enabled the “Profile view history” feature on their TikTok accounts. While this feature is the only way to see who frequents your profile page, it isn’t reliable because of this limitation.

Fortunately, this limitation applies to other users, giving you a way to prevent them from knowing you looked at their profile page.

It’s a double-edged sword because you must allow others to see you in their profile views list if you want to see them in yours.

What is the eye icon on TikTok?

The eye icon on your TikTok profile page is where you can access your profile view list. If the “Profile view history” feature isn’t active, you can enable it by clicking the icon and toggling the corresponding switch.

If you search for someone on TikTok, they may know about it through this feature. Thankfully, visiting someone’s profile page doesn’t necessarily mean you searched for them, so this feature isn’t as reliable as it should be.

Remember, you won’t see the eye icon if you don’t update your TikTok app to a version with the “Profile view history” feature. Thus, the absence of this eye icon is a sign that your app is out of date and requires an immediate update.

However, not seeing an eye icon on your profile page doesn’t always mean this because TikTok can change it for future updates. 

If you didn’t know, a past app version used a footprint icon for the profile view list, so they can change it if they want to.

Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too confusing because it will likely stay in the same spot whether or not TikTok changes this icon.

How can I visit someone’s profile without them knowing?

Here are some methods for visiting someone’s TikTok profile page without them knowing about it. These methods will make your presence anonymous, preventing the profile owner from identifying you as their visitor.

Method 1. Turn off profile view history on TikTok

Difficulty	Very Easy ●○○○○
Number of Steps	7
Time to Perform Fix	30 seconds
Things Needed	Any smartphone A working internet connection

As mentioned, the “Profile view history” feature can only record profile visitors who also use it. If you turn this feature off, the account owner won’t know you visited their profile page, even if their “Profile view history” is active.

After all, your accounts must enable this feature before it can work. Unless both parties consent to this feature recording their presence when viewing someone’s profile, they won’t see and appear on the profile view list. 

Step 1: Go to TikTok.

Step 2: Go to your Profile.

Step 3: Tap your TikTok profile’s hamburger menu.

Step 4: Click “Settings and privacy.”

Step 5: Go to Privacy.

Step 6: Select Profile Views.

Step 7: Turn off “Profile view history.”

Although this method should be enough to hide your identity when viewing someone’s TikTok profile, there are other ways. Given this feature’s history, the developers can remove it again, so having more options is better.

Method 2. Block them immediately 

Difficulty	Very Easy ●○○○○
Number of Steps	7
Time to Perform Fix	30 seconds
Things Needed	Any smartphone A working internet connection

Blocking the profile you visited is another way to prevent the account owner from identifying you. Doing so will remove your presence on the platform from the blocked account.

As a result, TikTok will remove you from the target’s profile view list. However, you must block them before they can see you from the profile view list, or blocking them will be pointless.

After all, you can’t use the block feature to make someone forget what they already saw.

Step 1: Go to TikTok.

Step 2: Go to Home.

Step 3: Tap the lens icon in your TikTok home feed.

Step 4: Search for a user.

Step 5: Click the share icon.

Step 6: Click Block.

Step 7: Click Block again.

Method 3. Create and switch to a burner TikTok account 

Difficulty	Very Easy ●○○○○
Number of Steps	7
Time to Perform Fix	30 seconds
Things Needed	Any smartphone A working internet connection

Finally, you can use a burner account to view someone’s profile page without them knowing it was you. However, you must ensure your burner account has no information that your target can link to you.

Otherwise, it would be meaningless if they could deduce you were the person behind the burner account.

Step 1: Go to TikTok.

Step 2: Go to your Profile.

Step 3: Tap your TikTok profile’s hamburger menu.

Step 4: Click “Settings and privacy.”

Step 5: Scroll down and click Switch Account.

Step 6: Select your burner account. Note: Continue if you don’t have a burner account yet.

Step 7: Click Add account.

Step 8: Select your signup option and follow the on-screen instructions. Note: After creating your burner account, follow the previous steps to switch accounts.

---