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iOS 17: How to Easily Turn Your Pet Into a Cute Live Sticker

Your pet deserves their own sticker. Here's how to make that happen.

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
2 min read
Apple's iOS 17 mobile operating system
James Martin/CNET

Apple released iOS 17 in September, and the update brought several improvements to your iPhone, such as the useful StandBy mode and improvements to Message. One new feature is iOS 17's ability to turn your photos and live photos into custom Live Stickers

Read more: iOS 17 Cheat Sheet: What to Know About the Latest iPhone Update

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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 Photos app.
2. Tap the photo you want to turn into a Live Sticker.
3. Tap the photo again to enter full-screen mode. 
4. Tap and hold the item in the photo you want to turn into a sticker.
5. Tap Add Sticker.

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 drawer automatically, and you'll be given the options to Rearrange, Add Effect or Delete your Live Sticker within the Stickers drawer. Tapping Add Effect will let you put an effect on your sticker, like a white outline to make it look even more 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 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 what to know about iOS 17.4, what new features were included in iOS 17.3 and our iOS 17 cheat sheet.

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