I love my dog, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She’s brown and white and precious, and I take every opportunity to show her to the world. With an iPhone feature called Live Stickers, I can turn photos of her into emoji and stickers, and then text them to others.
Apple introduced Live Stickers in iOS 17 as an evolution of the tap-and-lift feature from iOS 16, which lets you cut out subjects from photos and Live Photos. Now, by saving those cutouts as emoji and stickers of pets, family and friends, you can send endless cuteness to others.
Here’s how to transform your photos into emoji and stickers to send in Messages and other apps.
How to make Live Stickers and emoji from pictures
1. Open your Photos app.2. Tap the photo you want to turn into an emoji or sticker.3. Tap and hold the item in the photo you want to turn into an emoji or sticker until you see the white outline.4. Tap Add Sticker.
Make sure you select the folded-over circle (selected above) to view your new emoji.
Apple/Screenshot by CNET
Your iPhone will then add the Live Sticker to your Stickers drawer and appear in your emoji keyboard. If you tap the new sticker, you’ll be given the options to Rearrange, Add Effect or Delete it. Tapping Add Effect will let you add an effect to your sticker, like a white outline, to make it look even more like a sticker.
The next time you go into Messages, you can use your new sticker as an emoji by tapping the emoji keyboard in the bottom-left corner of your screen, tapping the folded-over circle and tapping the emoji you want to use.
According to Apple, you can use your new Live Sticker anywhere you can access emoji. I tried to use my Live Stickers on the messaging app Slack, but they wouldn’t appear in the app. I also couldn’t access my Live Stickers in some third-party apps, like TikTok, so you might run into some issues when using your Live Stickers outside of Apple apps and devices.
For more on iOS, here are my first impressions of the iOS 26 beta, how to enable call screening in the beta and all the other new features Apple said that update will bring to your device later this year.
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