You land on a massive creator’s profile. They have three million followers, but their recent videos are only pulling a few thousand views. Naturally, you want to know what actually put them on the map. You want to see the exact video that went viral.
So, you look for the sorting button. You want to click “Sort by Most Viewed.” But it’s not there.
A few years ago, TikTok quietly stripped away the ability to easily sort another user’s profile by their most popular videos. If you are looking at your own analytics, you have total control. But if you are trying to analyze a competitor or just satisfy your own curiosity about a random creator, the app forces you to look at their content in chronological order.
If they have been posting three times a day for four years, you are going to get carpal tunnel trying to scroll down to their biggest hit.
But you don’t actually have to scroll. If you want to check someone’s most viewed TikTok, you just have to use a few easy workarounds to bypass the chronological feed. Here is how to find the viral gold.
Method 1: The Pinned Video Shortcut
Let’s start with the most obvious clue. Creators are essentially running their own digital marketing funnels. They know their viral videos are their best assets for gaining new followers. Because of this, 90% of the time, a creator’s most viewed video is sitting right at the top of their profile. TikTok allows users to pin up to three videos to the very top of their grid.
Before you start using third party tools or typing in search commands, just look at those top three slots. You will see a little red “Pinned” icon in the corner of the thumbnail. Check the view counts printed on the bottom left of those specific videos. Usually, one of those is the multi million view monster that blew up their account.
Method 2: The Search Bar Filter Trick
If their pinned videos are just recent announcements or brand deals, you have to outsmart the search bar. TikTok’s native search engine is actually incredibly powerful if you know how to filter the results.
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Open the app and tap the magnifying glass.
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Type in the creator’s exact username.
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Hit search, and then tap the Videos tab at the top of your screen.
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Look for the two little toggle lines (the filters icon) right next to the search bar. Tap it.
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Under “Sort by,” switch it from Relevance to Most Liked.
Because TikTok heavily correlates likes with views, this will immediately pull up the absolute biggest videos from that specific creator. It completely ignores their timeline and serves you their greatest hits on a silver platter.
Method 3: Desktop Chrome Extensions
If you are doing serious social media research or auditing a competitor’s content strategy, doing this on your phone gets tedious fast. You need to move over to your desktop browser. The web version of TikTok doesn’t have a native sorting button either, but you can force it to have one by installing a browser extension.
Head to the Chrome Web Store and look for free extensions like “Sort for TikTok.” Once you install it and pin it to your browser, just go to the creator’s profile page on TikTok.com. Click the extension icon, and it will automatically scrape the page and rearrange the entire video grid by view count, from highest to lowest.
It is the closest thing you will get to the old “Sort by Popular” button. Just remember that these extensions have to physically load the page data. If the creator has thousands of videos, it might take a minute for the extension to organize everything.
Method 4: Third Party Analytics Tools
Sometimes you don’t just want to see the video. You want to see the actual data behind the account.
There are massive third party analytics sites built entirely around scraping TikTok data. Websites like Countik, Social Blade, or Exolyt allow you to type in any public username and instantly pull up a dashboard of their account health.
These platforms usually have a dedicated section on the creator’s profile page highlighting their top performing videos, average engagement rates, and follower growth charts.
A quick warning here: stick to the reputable web based tools. You should never, under any circumstances, download a sketchy app to your phone that asks you to log into your own TikTok account just to see someone else’s stats. The web tools don’t require a login, making them completely safe to use for your research.
Finding that one viral video takes a little more effort than it used to. But by using the search filters or leaning on a quick browser extension, you can skip the endless scrolling and get straight to the content that actually matters.
