Lemon8

Is Lemon8 safe?

Lemon8 is a fairly ordinary lifestyle app with a complicated owner. It collects less than TikTok according to its App Store label, but it still tracks you for third-party advertising, and the facts that would settle the bigger question, how its data moves inside ByteDance, are hard to check. Its own privacy policy site was down when we tried to open it in October 2026. We score it 49/100, between TikTok (41) and its sister app CapCut (53), with low confidence because the primary documents are thin.

Lemon8 mixes Instagram-style photo posts with Pinterest-style tips: beauty, fashion, food, travel and money-saving guides. ByteDance launched it in Japan in 2020 and in the US in February 2023.

What data does Lemon8 collect?

Apple's privacy label says Lemon8 may use identifiers to track you across other companies' apps. User ID, device ID and advertising data are used for third-party advertising. Coarse location, email address, photos and videos, search history and how you use the app are linked to your identity. There is no precise location or contacts on the list.

Google Play's data safety section gives a different picture. It says the app shares no data with third parties, and lists sexual orientation among the optional data collected, used for personalisation. The two labels are written by the developer, and Apple's answer on ads tracking and Google's answer on sharing are hard to square. We give more weight to Apple's, because it describes ad use in detail.

We could not read Lemon8's privacy policy itself. The lemon8-app.com site, including its legal pages, returned "Service Unavailable" when we checked on 15 October 2026, and no archived copy was available. That is a real gap: the policy is where questions like data transfers within ByteDance would be answered.

Lemon8, ByteDance and the TikTok law

The 2024 US law forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok applies to apps owned or operated by ByteDance or its subsidiaries, so it also covered Lemon8. US lawmakers and officials argued that ByteDance's links to China could force it to hand over Americans' data. On the weekend of 18 and 19 January 2025, Lemon8 vanished from Apple's and Google's US stores along with TikTok and CapCut. It is available in both again.

The deal that followed closed in January 2026. The TikTok USDS Joint Venture, with Silver Lake, Oracle and MGX holding 15% each and ByteDance 19.9%, says its safeguards for US user data, apps and the algorithm "will also cover CapCut, and Lemon8". It says it holds decision-making authority over trust and safety policies and moderation for the US content ecosystem. The App Store and Google Play still list TikTok Pte. Ltd. in Singapore as the publisher, so how far Lemon8's US operations have actually moved is not fully clear from public documents.

Outside the US, none of this applies, and Lemon8 runs as a ByteDance app.

Content and teenagers

Lemon8 is rated 13+ on the App Store and Teen on Google Play. The risks are less about scams, where we found no regulator findings, and more about the feed itself. Much of it is about looks, dieting, shopping and "perfect" routines, and ByteDance paid creators to post on Lemon8 as it tried to grow the app in the US, according to reporting by The Wrap. Sponsored posts are not always obvious to younger users.

How to use Lemon8 more safely

1. Do not add optional profile details such as sexual orientation or phone number.
2. In your phone's settings, deny location and photo library access beyond what a post needs, and turn off ad tracking.
3. Treat product recommendations as possible ads, especially from accounts with big followings.
4. For teenagers, set the account to private and review who can comment and message.
5. If you leave, ask for your data to be deleted; Google Play says the developer offers a way to request it.

How we scored it

Privacy (40) and transparency and control (45) are the weakest factors: ad tracking, labels that contradict each other and a privacy policy we could not open. Security (52) and scams and harmful content (55) are middling, with no known breach or regulator finding. The regulatory record (60) has no fine against Lemon8 itself, but the app was caught up in the US law aimed at ByteDance.