What is tiktok-scraper?

This is a Python script for pulling public video data from TikTok, using an unofficial library called TikTokApi rather than TikTok's own official API. It can gather videos in four ways: by hashtag, by a specific username, from the trending feed, or by a search keyword. For each video it finds, it extracts details like view count, like count, comment count, share count, the caption text, hashtags used, information about the video's author such as username, display name, follower count, and verification status, along with the video's direct URL, thumbnail image, length in seconds, and the name of the audio track used. All of this gets saved as a JSON file with a name that includes the mode used, the search query, and a timestamp, placed in an output folder. To set it up, you need Python 3.9 or newer, plus the TikTokApi library and a Chromium browser installed through Playwright. Running it is done through the command line, specifying a mode such as hashtag, user, trending, or search, along with a query and how many results to fetch. The README recommends supplying an optional session token called msToken to reduce the chance of TikTok blocking the requests as bot activity. It explains how to get this token by opening TikTok in a browser, checking the cookies through developer tools, and copying the msToken value, which can then be passed either as a command line flag or as an environment variable. The README warns that because this relies on an unofficial library, TikTok can change its internal systems at any time and break the scraper, and that video download links expire after a few hours. It also notes plainly that scraping TikTok without permission may go against TikTok's terms of service, and that the tool should be used responsibly. The project is released under the MIT license.