How to understand TikTok’s homescreen icons

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Icons have become a very handy way of accessing the features of your various apps - especially when you're dealing with a lot of features on the relatively small screen of your phone. However, if you're not yet familiar with a particular app and you are faced with a plethora of icons, most of which are not labeled, how do you know what they are and how you should be handling them?

(And believe me, if you have this problem, you're not the only one - I can't tell you how many times I've hit a mysterious icon out of curiosity and then started yelling, I didn't want to do that!" at the screen....)

So I'm going to go over the icons you will probably see as a viewer on your TikTok homescreen and various other screens. Keep in mind that apps...

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