What’s in your TikTok data download: reading the JSON file
Unlike Instagram’s or Snapchat’s exports, TikTok’s JSON download isn’t a folder of small files you can pick through. It’s one document with everything nested inside it — likes, watch history, follows, messages. Here’s how it’s laid out, and how to read it without a computer.
Short answer
Request it in TikTok under Settings and privacy → Account → Download your data, and choose JSON. The zip holds one big file — user_data_tiktok.json in recent exports, user_data.json in older ones — with every section nested inside it. Open that file in a JSON viewer to get a collapsible tree instead of one endless line.
Get Sonnet free Reads the file offline, nothing uploaded.
JSON or TXT: which should you request?
The request screen makes you pick one, and the choice matters more here than on other services.
- TXT is the easier one to just read. Every guide that compares the two says it also carries less than the JSON version does.
- JSON is the structured copy. Every open-source tool written to parse a TikTok export requires it, and one states flatly that the TXT export will not work with it. Pick JSON if you want to count things, pull out dates, or feed the data to anything else.
If you already downloaded the wrong format, request it again — the choice is made per export, not per account.
1. Request your data in JSON
In the TikTok app, open your profile, then the menu, then Settings and privacy → Account → Download your data. TikTok renames and moves these screens between app versions, so treat that as a guide rather than a map; “Download your data” has been the stable wording.
You then choose between all of your data and a custom selection of categories, and between the two file formats. Two things worth knowing before you tap request: a custom selection leaves out whatever you didn’t tick, so if you want your direct messages in the file, make sure the messages category is selected; and the options also decide whether your own posted videos come along, which is what separates a small download from an enormous one. Guides disagree about what that defaults to, so read the screen rather than assuming.
How long it takes varies a lot — reports run from a few hours to a few days, depending on how much you asked for. When the notification arrives, download it promptly: the guides that document the expiry say the link is only good for about four days.
2. Unzip it and find the one file
- Download the zip from the in-app link or the email. It lands in Downloads.
- Open Files by Google or your phone’s file manager, tap the zip and choose Extract.
- Open the extracted folder. The JSON file is usually right at the top of it rather than inside a subfolder.
If your file manager refuses the zip outright, that is a known complaint rather than a corrupt download: at least one export tool’s FAQ warns that TikTok compresses these archives in a way Windows Explorer won’t open, and recommends a different extractor. The same cause is the first thing to suspect on a phone.
3. One file, not a folder
This is the part that catches people out. Snapchat’s export gives you a json folder with a file per category, and Instagram’s is a tree of small files. You open the one you want and ignore the rest.
TikTok’s JSON export is a single document. Every tool that reads it takes one file path as its argument, and the file is named user_data_tiktok.json or, in older exports, user_data.json. There is no way to open “just the likes” — the whole thing loads at once, which is why its size matters more than it would elsewhere.
What’s in the file
| Where to look | What it holds |
|---|---|
Like List → ItemFavoriteList | Every video you liked, as a list of links |
Favorite Videos → FavoriteVideoList | The videos you bookmarked |
Watch History → VideoList | Videos you watched, each with a link and a date. Older guides call this section Video Browsing History |
Video → Videos → VideoList | The videos you posted, each with a Date, a Likes count and a Link |
Following List → Following | Accounts you follow, each with a UserName |
Paths as read from open-source tools that parse this export, October 2026. Each of these sections sits one level down from the top of the file, under a container whose name has changed between export versions — see below. Direct messages are in the export too when you ask for them, but no tool I could check reads them, so this table doesn’t guess at their path.
Where your liked videos are
The likes are the most-wanted part, usually because someone wants their saved videos back before an account goes away. They are three levels down, and each entry is little more than a URL:
{
"Likes and Favorites": {
"Like List": {
"ItemFavoriteList": [
{ "Link": "https://www.tiktok.com/@someone/video/…" }
]
}
}
}
Illustrative, built from the field names the parsers read. Some exports spell the field link in lower case — the tools accept either, and so should you when you go looking.
Your bookmarks live beside it under Favorite Videos → FavoriteVideoList, in the same shape. Neither list holds the videos themselves, only addresses pointing back at TikTok, so a link to something that has since been deleted leads nowhere.
Where your watch history is
The watch log is the section that makes the file big. Each row is small — a link and a date — but there is one for every video that went past, which on an active account is a great many rows. That is the part to collapse first in a viewer, and the part to scroll past if you are looking for something else.
Tip: in a file this shape, Sonnet Pro’s search jumps straight to a username or a date. Without it, collapse the tree to the top level and open only the section you want — which on a single-file export is the difference between reading it and giving up.
Why the key names in guides don’t match your file
TikTok has renamed the top of this file at least once, and the evidence is in the tools: one scraper looks for a container called Likes and Favorites, then Your Activity, then plain Activity, and uses whichever it finds first. Older guides and older parsers assume Activity holds everything; newer ones split it in two.
So treat every path in every guide, this one included, as a starting point rather than an address. Open the file, collapse it to the top level, and read the section names your own export actually uses. That is a two-second job in a tree view and a miserable one in a text editor, which is most of the argument for using a viewer at all.
Will the file open on a phone?
Usually, yes, because the heavy part of a TikTok download isn’t the JSON. The guides that discuss size agree the gigabytes are the video files; the data itself is text, measured in megabytes. If your download is the JSON alone, you have a text file and nothing more.
Roughly how big? Nobody publishes byte counts, so this is an estimate rather than a fact: a watch-history row is a date and a link, on the order of a hundred bytes, so even tens of thousands of them come to single-digit megabytes. Your own file is the only authority on your own file.
Concretely, in Sonnet: the full collapsible tree is free for JSON up to about 2 MB, and files up to 20 MB open as formatted text. Sonnet Pro, a one-time unlock, raises those to a 30 MB tree and 50 MB files, and adds search. Because TikTok ships everything in one document, this export is likelier than Snapchat’s or Instagram’s to pass that free tree limit: a quiet account’s file may well open as a tree, while a heavy scroller’s is more likely to open as formatted text. Past 50 MB you want a computer, and how to open a large JSON file on Android lists what works at that size.
If the file won’t open at all, that’s a different problem — what “invalid JSON” means covers the usual causes. And if a .json file is new to you, start with what a JSON file is.
Before you upload it anywhere
Plenty of sites and extensions offer to turn this file into something prettier. Read the table again first. One file holds your likes, your watch history, who you follow, your searches and, if you ticked the box, your private messages — all in one upload. Reading it yourself is slower and keeps every bit of it on your phone.
Read your TikTok export on your phone
Sonnet opens JSON files as a collapsible tree, entirely offline, so nothing you open is uploaded. No ads, no account. Free on Google Play, with an optional one-time Pro unlock for bigger files and search.
