Chinese social apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 have soared to the top two spots on Apple's iPhone charts ahead of the U.S.'s impending TikTok ban.

By Katie Paul NEW YORK - Chinese social media app RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, gained nearly 3 million U.S. users in one day earlier this week as a flood of self-proclaimed "TikTok Refugees" joined,

With TikTok's potential US ban nears, users are scrambling for new apps like RedNote and Clapper, hoping to replace the beloved short-form video platform.

“The ones benefiting from traffic from the TikTok ban are still Chinese apps,” GSR Ventures managing director Allen Zhu wrote on WeChat, posting a screenshot of the US App Store download chart. A stream of new English-language content and users showed up on Xiaohongshu this week, and the #tiktokrefugee hashtag garnered more than 25 million views.

As TikTok moves closer to being kicked out of the U.S., two Chinese apps — Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, which shares parent company ByteDance with TikTok — have blitzed to the top of the Apple App Store. As of Tuesday morning,

Users are migrating to other video apps as a ban on TikTok looms closer. With a TikTok ban looming, some users are scrambling to find a new destination for trending videos.

Time is dwindling before TikTok faces a ban in the U.S., and weighing their options, some users aren't just turning to Instagram or YouTube to fill the void.

With the TikTok ban in the United States less than a week away, Xiaohongshu has surged to the top of Apple's iOS App Store downloads.

Some TikTok users aren't waiting until the upcoming Jan. 19 ban to test out other short-form video sharing apps, but instead of Meta's social media sites or the Fediverse, they're swarming to other Chinese-owned mobile software platforms.