iOS 17 Lets You Turn Your Favorite Pictures Into Live Stickers

You can make send these stickers in Messages and other apps.

Zachary McAuliffe Staff writer

Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.

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Zachary McAuliffe

Oct. 15, 2023 4:00 a.m. PT

2 min read

You can download iOS 17 now.

James Martin/CNET

After months of waiting, Apple released iOS 17 on Sept. 18, bringing a number of improvements to your iPhone, such as the useful StandBy mode. But one of the most impressive new features is iOS 17's ability to turn your photos and live photos into custom Live Stickers.

Live Stickers are an evolution of the tap-and-lift photo feature introduced in iOS 16, which lets you cut out the backgrounds of photos and live photos. The new iOS 17 feature lets you add effects to the cut-out images and store the stickers in the new app drawer in Messages.

Here's how you can take your pictures and make them into stickers to send in Messages and other apps.

How to make Live Stickers in iOS 17

1. Open your Messages on your iPhone.
2. Go into any text conversation and tap the plus sign (+) next to the text field.
3. Tap Stickers.
4. Tap the folded-over circle near the top-right corner of the Stickers app.
5. Tap the large plus sign (+). This will open your Photos.
6. Select which photo or live photo you want to make into a sticker. Your iPhone will automatically cut the background from the photo.
7. If you're happy with the sticker, tap Add Sticker in the bottom-right corner of your screen.

Five pictures of a brown and white dog — Make sure you select the folded-over circle (selected above) to create your own stickers.
Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

Your Live Sticker will be added to the Stickers app in Messages automatically, and you'll be given the options to Rearrange, Add Effect or Delete your Live Sticker within the Stickers app. Tapping Add Effect will put an effect on your sticker, like a white outline to make it really look like a sticker.

According to Apple, you can use your new Live Sticker anywhere you can access emoji, including in other apps and between other Apple devices that aren't running iOS 17. I tried to use a Live Sticker on the messaging app Slack, however, and my sticker was given a white background. 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 17, here's my review of the latest OS and our iOS 17 cheat sheet.

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