How to Duet on TikTok.

The short answer

To Duet on TikTok, open the video, tap Share, tap Duet, record your half, then edit and post. Your video plays side by side with the original. Whether others can Duet your brand’s videos is a separate setting: the account must be public, and you choose Everyone, Friends or Only you in privacy settings.

What a TikTok Duet is

TikTok describes Duet as a way to post your video side by side with a video from another creator. Both halves play together in one split screen.

For TikTok brands, that makes Duet one of the most direct reply formats in Short-form video: you answer a creator, a customer or a trend in the same frame as the thing you are answering. Like going live on TikTok, it rewards teams that can move quickly.

It is also something other people can do to your videos. So for a brand, how to duet on TikTok is really two questions. How do you make one, and who is allowed to make one with you?

How to Duet a video, step by step

TikTok’s own steps:

1. Tap the Share button on the side of the video you want to Duet.
2. Tap Duet at the bottom. You may need to swipe to find it.
3. Add effects, filters or other camera tools.
4. Tap Record to start and stop, then tap Continue.
5. Add a filter, voice, text, stickers or effects, or use the advanced editing tools.
6. Tap Your Story to post it to your Story, or Next to add a description, hashtags, tags, location, a link or privacy settings.
7. Tap Post to publish, or Drafts to save it. Drafts are visible only to you.

If you cannot see Duet on a video, that is expected. TikTok notes that not all videos have Duet turned on.

Where a Duet appears

A Duet only appears on the profile of the person who recorded it. The original video stays on the original creator’s profile.

The recorder’s privacy settings decide who can watch, comment on, download or interact with the Duet. When your brand records a Duet, your settings apply. When someone Duets your video, theirs do.

That is the part teams forget. Once someone else has Duetted your video, the audience for that Duet is their call, not yours.

Who can Duet your brand’s videos

TikTok is clear on the first condition: you must have a public account to allow others to Duet with your videos. Its Privacy Centre puts the same rule the other way round: on a private account, other people cannot Duet with, Stitch with or download your videos at all.

After that, you choose who can Duet with your videos in your account privacy settings. TikTok describes three options:

• Everyone: anyone can Duet your videos, as long as you have Duet turned on.
• Friends: only followers you follow back.
• Only you: nobody else can Duet your videos.

For a brand account, the account-wide setting is a policy decision, not a default to leave alone. Decide it once, write it down and check it whenever someone new gets the login.

Turning Duet off for one video

You do not have to choose between all or nothing. TikTok lets you turn Duet off for individual posts.

That is the useful control for a brand. Leave Duet open on content built to be answered, such as a challenge, a question or a reaction prompt, and switch it off on anything sensitive: a product recall notice, a statement, a video featuring staff or customers, or anything a competitor could use as a backdrop.

Make the check part of publishing. One line on the pre-post checklist, Duet on or off, settles it before the video goes live rather than after a Duet you did not want appears.

Removing or reporting a Duet

If a Duet linked to your video is a problem, you have two routes.

TikTok lets you delete Duet videos associated with your post. If you believe a Duet breaks TikTok’s Community Guidelines, you can also report it, and TikTok offers an online form for a Duet that violates someone’s privacy rights.

Keep a record of what you removed or reported and why. If the same account keeps coming back, that record is what makes the next decision quick.

When a brand should Duet

Duet works best when your half adds something the original does not have. Good uses:

• answering a creator who reviewed your product, in their frame
• showing how something is made alongside a customer using it
• joining a trend with a clear brand point of view rather than a copy
• a staff expert reacting to a question video in their own field

The weak use is a brand face nodding along to someone else’s video. If your half does not say anything, post nothing.

What good looks like

A brand that runs Duet well has a written answer to three questions: what our account-wide Duet setting is, which videos have Duet switched off, and who decides whether we Duet a creator.

Its Duets are planned like any other post, cut properly and checked before they go out. Producing that kind of reactive video at pace is a large part of our video production and editing work.

How NBK thinks about Duet

Duet is a conversation format. It rewards brands that are quick, specific and willing to share the frame with someone else.

It also puts your content in other people’s hands, which makes it an operations question as much as a creative one. The same thinking applies to TikTok’s other open formats, such as voice notes in comments.

Next step

If your short-form output feels busy but not effective, start with an NBK audit of how the work gets made and published.