I tried the viral TikTok adjustable buttons and they actually work pretty well

Don’t trust anything on the internet — until Mashable tries it first. Welcome to the Hype Test, where we review viral trends and tell you what’s really worth millions of likes.

You get your jeans out of the dryer. You wrestle them on and in classic post-dryer form they fit like a glove.

Twenty minutes pass and your jeans have already succumb to the cursed jean waist stretch. What do you do now? Walk around for the rest of the day with that weird back of waist gappage? Wear a belt?

I’m a firm believer that a belt can ruin an outfit. There is something so practical about a belt, that it can suck all the whimsy out of an outfit (unless it’s like $100 and from Lisa Says Gah and in that case I can’t afford it). With the belt solution out the window I decided to try TikTok’s answer to the age-old problem of waist gappage: adjustable buttons.

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I heard about the buttons when I was out to lunch with a friend and she adjusted her pants during our meal. She swore by the buttons and assured me that they periodically go viral on TikTok.

The buttons were only $5 on Amazon and came in a pack of four.

The buttons come two pieces: the adjustable button, which is essentially a pin, and the cap to the pin. You place the pin where you want the button of your pants to be which adjusts the waist of your pants. Then you stab your pants with the pin and push in the cap.

Make sure to place it on the button side of your pants. I kept accidentally putting the pin on the buttonhole side.

After you insert the pin your desired location, cover it with the cap.
Credit: MASHABLE: ELENA CAVENDER

The stabbing part of the process was a huge barrier for me. I was raised in a household where ripping off a tag from clothing instead of cutting it was practically criminal, so willfully puncturing my pants is against my nature. I found the hole created by the pin to be noticeable and it bothered me.

Using the adjustable button leaves little holes.
Credit: MASHABLE: ELENA CAVENDER

The pin is also quite dangerous. I stabbed my finger in the process of placing the button.

These buttons are not for the faint of heart.
Credit: MASHABLE: ELENA CAVENDER

I tried the button out on four different pairs of pants: two pairs of jeans, a pair of cotton pants, and a pair of canvas pants.

The button worked well on all my pants; it allows your pants to fit snugger without a belt or god forbid getting your pants custom tailored. The button is super secure and doesn’t pop off when you’re sitting or moving around. It’s so secure that I consistently struggled to remove the button from my pants.

I found that the button works best on pants that are slightly too big in the waist, because then you avoid having the button off center. I see lots of girls on TikTok with their pants button off center and it doesn’t seem to bother them, but I personally don’t like how it looks.

On pants that require a deeper button, the pants can become asymmetrical and cause some weird bunching around the zipper. The bunching is also worse with lightweight fabrics and more noticeable with lighter colored fabrics.

I found the asymmetrical button and bunching to look weird and I didn’t like that I was making a hole in my pants every time I used them, but the buttons were only $5 and are a great quick fix. I’ll probably end up using them again — but only when desperate times call for desperate measures.