Emoji Stickers: How to Make and Use Them on Any App

People use "emoji" and "sticker" as if they were the same thing. They aren't, and the difference explains a lot about what you can and can't do with each one.

An emoji is a character in the Unicode Standard, like a letter. When you send a grinning cat 😺, you are sending a code, and the receiving phone draws it with its own font. That's why the same emoji looks different on an iPhone and a Samsung (we cover that in why emoji look different across devices).

A sticker is a picture file. It looks the same for everyone, it can be any shape or subject, and anyone can make one. Unicode itself points this out in its emoji submission FAQ: for very specific objects, there is "always the option of using emoji-style images (aka stickers)." In other words, if something will never become an official emoji, a sticker is the usual answer.

Apple turned emoji into stickers in iOS 17. Its iOS 17 announcement added "new emoji stickers," Live Stickers made by lifting the subject out of a photo, and a single sticker drawer in the keyboard for all of them.

Menu names can change between iOS versions. Apple's current steps: Make stickers from your photos.

Since iOS 17, emoji also work as stickers in Messages: instead of typing one into your text, you can place it on top of a message bubble. Apple's page on sending stickers in Messages covers the details.

With Apple Intelligence, iOS 18.2 added Genmoji in December 2024. You type a description into the emoji keyboard and the iPhone generates a custom emoji-style image, which you can send inline, as a sticker or as a Tapback, according to Apple's announcement. Genmoji are images, not Unicode emoji, so people on other platforms receive a picture rather than a character. Apple's guide: Create Genmoji.

On Android the best-known emoji sticker tool is Emoji Kitchen in Gboard. Google launched it in February 2020: tap a smiley in Gboard's emoji panel and it suggests sticker mashups you can send in apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messages and Snapchat.

Google's December 2020 update added picking any two smileys and said double-tapping one emoji gives a stronger version of it. There's also a web version: search "emoji kitchen" in Google and tap "Get cooking" (Google, July 2024). Our full Emoji Kitchen guide has more combinations, and our own Emoji Combiner lets you mash up emoji in the browser.

WhatsApp's own sticker maker came to Android in August 2024 after starting on iOS, per the WhatsApp blog. You can create a sticker from a photo, crop it, add text and draw on it.

Button names differ slightly between the iPhone and Android apps.

If you're building a sticker pack app, WhatsApp's developer README sets strict rules:

The README also recommends an 8 px white outline. Those specs apply to third-party pack apps, not to stickers you make inside WhatsApp itself.

Telegram added an in-app sticker editor in April 2024. From the sticker panel, tap +, pick any photo, remove the background in one tap, add text or an outline and assign emoji, says the Telegram blog. Each set gets its own share link.

For bigger sets, Telegram's sticker documentation lists the formats:

Custom emoji are Telegram's closest thing to making your own emoji. Anyone can create them, but adding and using custom sets is a Telegram Premium feature, per the same page. The static size limit comes from Telegram's import guide.