TikTok search guide: All you need to know about the TikTok search menu

To search on TikTok, tap the magnifying glass in the top right corner of the Home feed, type what you want, and press Search. That one bar finds everything the app can find you, from accounts and videos to sounds, effects, hashtags and products. All of it. Your TikTok search results then split into tabs, and the Top tab is where TikTok puts whatever it reckons is closest to what you meant.

That is the short answer, and for most searches it is all you need. The rest of this guide is about the parts of the search menu that are easy to miss, because TikTok tucks a lot of them behind buttons that do not look like buttons. Filters live behind a More options button. You can search with a screenshot instead of a sentence. And there are two different things in there both called filters.

Search is not the only way content moves around TikTok. Most of what lands on the For You page gets there through the TikTok algorithm, and our guide to the best TikTok hashtags covers the tagging side of that. Search is the half you steer yourself, and if you are running an account for business, it is where people find you deliberately rather than by accident.

In this guide, we walk you through the basics of TikTok’s search functions so you can use them to the fullest in your marketing initiatives, and then the parts most people never find.

The short version

• On mobile, the magnifying glass in the top right of the Home feed opens TikTok search. On desktop, the bar sits at the top of the page.
• Results arrive grouped into tabs, and TikTok’s help pages say the Top tab holds what it considers most relevant.
• Filters hide behind the More options button above the results, and nothing changes until you tap Apply.
• You can search with an image instead of words. TikTok says visual search is optional and that your screenshots stay on your own device.
• TikTok calls two different things filters. Search filters change what you see; effects change how your own video looks. Both live behind the same bar.

Understanding the TikTok user search and the TikTok search bar

TikTok search is the in-app tool you use to find accounts, videos, sounds, effects, hashtags and products, all from a single search bar, with the results grouped into tabs. There is only one of it. Whether you are hunting a person, a song or a hair effect, you start in the same place.

As the name suggests, the TikTok user search is the function on the app that allows you to search for specific creator profiles. On TikTok, the user search is the same as the general TikTok search bar (which you can use to search for other types of content, such as sounds, specific videos, or hashtags).

What changes is where you look afterwards. Run a search and the results arrive grouped into tabs. TikTok’s own help pages say the Top tab is where the most relevant results land, which makes it the one worth trusting first. The other tabs shift with region, account type and app version, so treat the exact line-up on your screen as yours rather than universal.

How to search on TikTok

Now that you understand what the TikTok user search/TikTok search bar is, the next step is figuring out how to use it.

Here’s how to search on TikTok for various kinds of content:

1. On mobile, look for the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of your screen on the Home feed, and tap it to open search. On desktop, the search bar sits at the top of the page.
2. To search for a specific user, video, or type of content, type relevant keywords into the search bar. Be as specific as possible to generate results aligned with your search.
3. As you type, TikTok offers suggestions underneath the bar. Taking one is often quicker than finishing your own phrase, and it saves you guessing at spelling.
4. Press Search.
5. Your results arrive across several tabs. The Top tab holds what TikTok considers the closest matches, and it is usually where the useful stuff is. The other tabs narrow things down to one kind of result at a time, so you can look at accounts without wading through videos.
6. Explore these tabs as desired to find the results you’re looking for.

You can learn more about how search works on TikTok via the TikTok Help Center.

How to use TikTok’s search filters

Here’s the part most guides skip. Run a search, then look above the results for the More options button, open Filters from there, choose what you want, and tap Apply. Nothing changes until you make that last tap.

Filters do two jobs. They narrow the pool, so you get a slice of the results instead of all of them. And they reorder whatever survives, so the thing sitting at the top is the thing you asked for rather than the thing that collected the most attention. The exact set TikTok offers you shifts with your region, your account type and which version of the app you are on, which is why it is worth opening the panel and reading it rather than trusting a list in a blog post.

If you are researching a topic instead of browsing one, this is where the search bar stops being a toy. Filtering the same niche query by recency is the difference between finding the most popular video of the last three years and finding out whether anyone is talking about it this week.

How to search for TikTok effects and filters

Confusingly, TikTok calls two different things filters. The ones above are search filters, which change what you see. These are the visual kind, the effects that change how your own video looks, and you find them through the same search bar.

In this section, we will explain how to search for effects on TikTok so you can easily find and use them in your own content. For the effects themselves, which are worth having, our roundup of the best TikTok filters to try goes deeper than this section can.

1. Head to the search bar by following the steps outlined above depending on the device you are using.
2. Type in the name of the effect you are looking for, if you can remember it. If you can’t, type in keywords related to what it does (e.g., if the effect turns your hair brown, type in ‘Brown hair filter’ or ‘Brown hair effect’).
3. Press Search.
4. In the Top tab, you’ll see the top videos that match your search. If your search was successful, the tab will predominantly consist of videos in which users have used that same effect.

5. To use the effect yourself, open one of the videos and tap the name of the effect, which sits next to the star symbol. In this example it is Brown Hair II.

6. That opens the effect’s own page, a feed of every video using it. From there you can usually save the effect or start a video with it. TikTok has moved these buttons around more than once, so go by what is on your screen rather than what a screenshot from a few years ago shows.

How to search stickers on TikTok

TikTok stickers – which include things like TikTok emojis, GIFs, and more – can help make videos more fun and eye-catching. However, the process for finding them in the app is slightly different from the steps we’ve outlined previously.

Here is how to search stickers on TikTok:

1. In the TikTok app, click the large + button at the bottom of your screen (known as the Create button).
2. Here, you can film a new video directly in the app or upload an existing video or set of photos from your camera roll.
3. Once you’ve selected the content you’d like to post, click Next.
4. On the right-hand side, tap Stickers.
5. Once you have clicked on this menu, you will see a wide selection of TikTok stickers, TikTok GIFs, and TikTok emojis that you can lay over your video.
6. To move the stickers around, simply drag and drop them around the screen until they land in your desired spot.

How to search sounds on TikTok

Sounds also play a vital role in TikTok trends and, consequently, in TikTok marketing. When businesses use trending TikTok sounds, they improve their chances of going viral and attracting more traffic.

Follow the steps below to search for specific sounds on TikTok:

1. Go to the search bar.
2. Once you’ve located the TikTok search bar, type in the name of the sound or song you are looking for (if you can remember it). If you can’t remember the name of the sound, type in any keywords you can remember (e.g., certain lyrics or words included in the audio, the artist’s name, etc.).  
3. Press Search.
4. The Top tab will generate the top content featuring the sounds that align with your search. When you click on a video, you will see the sound at the bottom of the video next to the musical note symbol.
5. To refine your results even further, you can click the Sounds tab. Here, you will see a list of sounds that match your search.
6. When you click a sound, it will lead you to a page of videos that use this sound. At the top, you can press the image with the play symbol on it to hear the sound.
7. At the bottom of your screen, click Use this sound to create a video with that sound.

How to search TikTok with an image instead of words

Sometimes you have a picture and no words. A screenshot of an outfit, a frame from something you scrolled past, a product somebody was holding up and never named. TikTok will search on the image instead, and the route in starts from the post rather than from the search bar. Open whatever you want to search from, and the app offers to go looking for similar things.

Two things are worth knowing before you use it, both from what TikTok says about visual search. It is optional, so nothing gets uploaded unless you choose to upload it when the app prompts you. And your screenshots stay put. TikTok says it does not keep copies of them on its servers.

There is a flip side if you post as well as browse. Depending on where you are, TikTok lets you decide before publishing whether a post is allowed to turn up in visual search results. It is switched on by default, so if you would rather your videos were not reverse-image-searchable, that is a box to find before you hit post rather than after.

TikTok’s search is better than the single bar it looks like, and most of what makes it good sits one tap from where you already are. The Top tab, the More options button, an image instead of a sentence. None of it is hidden, exactly. It is just quiet.

If you want the other side of this, getting your own videos to turn up when somebody else searches, that is a different job with a different playbook, and the groundwork is in our guide to getting more views on TikTok. And if TikTok is not the only app you spend your day digging through, Instagram search has its own hidden features, most of which work nothing like these.

TikTok search FAQ

What is the TikTok search bar?

It is the single field you use to find everything on the app, from accounts and videos to sounds, effects, hashtags and products. On mobile you open it with the magnifying glass in the top right of the Home feed. On desktop it sits at the top of the page. There is only one of it, so looking for a person and looking for a song start in exactly the same place.

How do I find someone on TikTok if I don’t know their username?

Type what you do know about them instead of a handle. Words from a video they posted, a sound they used, a hashtag they use often, or just their real name will usually surface them. Then move off the Top tab and into the tab that shows accounts, so you get people rather than videos. If you already know the handle, typing the @ symbol followed by the username is the fastest route there is.

Does TikTok filter what shows up in search results?

Yes. TikTok’s support pages say it may filter posts out of search results to keep them relevant, appropriate and safe, and that this includes removing anything breaking its Community Guidelines. Which means a term returning thin results does not always mean nobody has posted about it. Sometimes it means the results were filtered before they ever reached you.

Can I keep my own videos out of TikTok’s visual search results?

Depending on where you are, yes. TikTok says you can choose whether a post is allowed to appear in visual search results, and that you set it before publishing rather than after. The setting is on by default, so if you want your videos left out of image-based searches you have to switch it off yourself, post by post.

When is TikTok’s search the wrong tool for the job?

When you need numbers rather than examples. Search is excellent at telling you what exists and how people phrase a topic, and useless at telling you how your own content performed or how it compares with anybody else’s. For that you want TikTok’s analytics, or something that keeps history for longer than the app does. Search finds things. It does not measure them.