How to Use the Shake/Ripple Effect in TikTok (2021)

Evan Gower March 27, 2021

Tik Tok, formerly known as musical.ly, has been an internet sensation since its release. It first spread like wildfire all across Asia before becoming really popular in the West as well. Tik Tok is one of the fastest growing social medias on the internet, with an almost 100% increase in users in 2019 alone.

How to Use the Shake/Ripple Effect in TikTok (2021)

One of the biggest aspects of TikTok that contributed to its explosion in adding trendy effects to your videos directly in the app. One of the most interesting trendy effects on the TikTok app is the “Ripple” effect. This article serves as a tutorial for doing the ripple effect on Tik Tok correctly.

Preparations

There is some preparation necessary for adding effects to your TikToks, but it is fairly straightforward. The ingredients for a cool ripple effect are the following:

You need to download Tik Tok from either the official App Store or Google Play Store, install it, and update it to the latest version.
Make sure to use your smartphone, because it is really hard to produce the ripple effect on other devices like tablets. It’s not impossible, but it is much harder.
Also, update your smartphone OS to the latest and have it charged to at least 50%. This might consume a lot of power because you will be shooting video while using an internet app.
Check if your Wi-Fi connection is working properly with a good signal. After this step, you are ready to begin.

How to Do the Ripple Effect Manually

The ripple effect on Tik Tok is not as difficult as people make it out to be. You just need to apply the right amount of shaking and do it at the right speed. You want an effect similar to ripples in the water and not a shaky mess.

Here are the detailed steps for doing it properly:

Start Tik Tok on your Android or iPhone.
Set the video recording speed to slow motion, with maybe the best speed of 0.5. You don’t need to shoot in slow motion, but it looks better that way.
Use your front camera and test the ripple effect recording yourself. Start recording in slow motion and quickly shake your phone towards and away from you. You don’t want to shake it sideways because it won’t cause a ripple effect. Slow shaking won’t help you either.
The video should look as if it had a water effect. The shakes should be shallow and rapid to produce such an effect. If you don’t succeed on the first try, don’t give up. This technique takes a lot of time and practice before you can perfect it.

This following method might sound silly, but it works. You can pretend that you have shaky hands and quickly move your phone back and forth. Think of it as your phone is set to maximum vibration, which is what you need to produce a perfect ripple effect.

How to Add the Shake Effect in TikTok

There is another way to get the ripple effect without all the shaking. You can use the tools built into the TikTok app to create the effect for you. Here is how you can do it:

Open Tik Tok on your smartphone.
Click on the button that says “effects” on the bottom right.
Under “Trending” there should be a button that says “Shake.”
Record a video of yourself and it should automatically have the “Shake” effect added to it.

You can also add the “Shake” effect to a video after you have recorded it, or to a video you are uploading from camera roll. This effect looks a little bit different than the produced manually ripple effect. You can play around with it and edit it to your liking.

Ripples on the Water

That is how you do the ripple effect on Tik Tok. It is not hard, but it may take some time to perfect. When you get good at it is when you can go wild and add some other effects or make the ripple effect more convincing.

Did you like this effect? Did you find the tutorial helpful? Let us know in the comments.