pyktok

Pyktok includes a Streamlit-based graphical interface. To use it:

1. Navigate to the pyktok directory in your terminal.
2. Run the following command:

streamlit run app.py

This will open a browser window with graphical controls for the library.

Install the pyktok package via pip, and ensure you install the Playwright binaries and their system dependencies to allow the scraper to function correctly.

pip install pyktok
playwright install
# optionally:
playwright install-deps

To ensure Pyktok can access content that requires being logged in, use specify_browser() to initialize the module with cookies from your local browser. This is often necessary for functions that scrape protected data. Common values include 'chrome', 'firefox', or 'edge'. Note that recent updates may make this step optional for some users.

import pyktok as pyk

# Initialize with cookies from your browser
pyk.specify_browser('chrome')

Use save_tiktok_multi_urls() to process a list of TikTok URLs. This is useful for batch processing metadata or videos.

Parameters:

• urls: A list of TikTok video URLs.
• save_video: Boolean. If True, downloads the video files.
• filename: The name of the CSV file for metadata.
• sleep: Integer. The number of seconds to wait between executions to avoid being autobanned by TikTok.

import pyktok as pyk

tiktok_videos = [
    'https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1',
    'https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7011536772089924869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1'
]

# Download metadata only, with a 1-second sleep between requests
pyk.save_tiktok_multi_urls(tiktok_videos, False, 'tiktok_data.csv', 1)

Use save_tiktok_comments() to extract comments from a video.

Parameters:

• url: The TikTok video URL.
• comment_count: The approximate number of comments to download.
• save_comments: Boolean. If True, saves comments to disk.
• return_comments: Boolean. If True, returns the comments to working memory.

import pyktok as pyk

# Download 30 comments from a video and save to disk
pyk.save_tiktok_comments('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675', comment_count=30, save_comments=True, return_comments=False)

Use alt_get_tiktok_json() to retrieve the full, raw JSON object embedded in a TikTok page. This is useful if you need to extract specific data fields that are not covered by the standard metadata functions.

import pyktok as pyk

tt_json = pyk.alt_get_tiktok_json('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7011536772089924869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1')

Use save_tiktok() to download a single video and its metadata directly to a CSV file.

Parameters:

• url: The TikTok video URL.
• save_video: Boolean. If True, the video file is downloaded. If False, only metadata is saved.
• filename: The name of the CSV file to save the metadata to.

import pyktok as pyk

# Download video and metadata to 'video_data.csv'
pyk.save_tiktok('https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktok/video/7106594312292453675?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1', True, 'video_data.csv')

Use save_tiktok_multi_urls to iterate through a list of video URLs and perform the same save operations as save_tiktok for each.

Parameters:

• video_urls (list or str): A list of URLs, or a string representing a path to a text file containing one URL per line.
• save_video (bool): Whether to download the video files.
• metadata_fn (str): Filename for the combined metadata CSV.
• sleep (int): Maximum random sleep time (in seconds) between requests to avoid rate limiting.
• browser_name (str, optional): Browser name for cookie extraction.

import pyktok

urls = ['https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/1', 'https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/2']

pyktok.save_tiktok_multi_urls(
    video_urls=urls,
    save_video=True,
    metadata_fn='batch_metadata.csv',
    sleep=4,
    browser_name='firefox'
)

The save_tiktok_comments function retrieves comments for a specific video and can save them directly to a CSV.

Parameters:

• video_url (str): The URL of the TikTok video.
• filename (str): The CSV filename. If empty, it defaults to [video_id]_comments.csv.
• comment_count (int): The number of comments to attempt to fetch.
• headless (bool): Whether to run the underlying browser in headless mode.
• save_comments (bool): If True, writes the comments to the CSV.
• return_comments (bool): If True, returns the comments as a pandas DataFrame.

import pyktok

# Save 50 comments from a video to a CSV
comments_df = pyktok.save_tiktok_comments(
    video_url='https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/123456789',
    filename='video_comments.csv',
    comment_count=50,
    browser_name='chrome'
)

To bypass restrictions and extract data, pyktok often requires cookies from a logged-in TikTok session. You can use specify_browser(browser) to extract cookies from a browser installed on your system.

Supported browser names (passed to browser_cookie3) include strings like "chrome", "firefox", or "edge".

import pyktok

# Specify the browser to extract cookies from
pyktok.specify_browser('chrome')