# Stickers > Sticker search, custom packs, stickers offered as you type, and saving stickers straight from the keyboard. URL: https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/stickers/ Section: Emoji & expression The sticker tool searches KLIPY and GIPHY. Where the app on the other end supports them, results go out as real stickers, and you can build your own packs from photos already on your phone. It sits right next to [GIFs](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/gifs/) in the toolbox and shares most of its settings. ## Searching and sending emoji/sticker-panel-unsupported-field — The standing notice a field that can't take images shows, with results dimmed underneath. Open the tool from the toolbox, or from the toolbar once you've pinned it there. Type to search KLIPY and GIPHY, or switch to **My stickers** for packs you've built yourself. With [Search by meaning](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/smart/search-by-meaning/) set to **Text and pictures**, a search in **My stickers** also finds your stickers by what they show, after the ones whose names or keywords match. Tap a result to download and insert it. While it downloads, the tile dims and shows a spinner over the preview. Tap more while it does and they queue up behind it, numbered in the order they'll be sent, then go out one by one. Tapping a numbered sticker again takes it out of the queue. This works for your own stickers too, and the queue is dropped if you move to another field before it finishes. The emoji and GIF panels are one tap away. The bottom row under the results holds ABC, a switch to emoji, GIFs and stickers, space and backspace, the same row the [emoji panel](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/picker/#switching-to-gifs-and-stickers) ends in. A swipe to the right across the results goes to the GIF panel. That setting can put the switch next to the search box instead, or turn it off; the ABC, space and backspace stay. Like the GIF panel, the sticker panel is a [panel layout](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/languages/custom-layouts/#panel-layouts) you can rearrange: its component is **Sticker search and results**. It opens as tall as the emoji panel's **Panel height** setting makes it, and like the GIF panel it has a [bar across its top](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/gifs/#making-the-panel-taller) that drags it taller or shorter. **Hide the search when you scroll** folds the search box and the chip rows away while you scroll down the results, [as on the GIF panel](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/gifs/#hiding-the-search-while-you-scroll). With the search box empty, a scrollable row of category chips (Trending, Love, Happy, Sad, Cute…) sits above the grid. Tap one to run it as a search, and tap the active chip to go back to trending. An ✕ at the end of the search box, while it holds a query, empties it and goes back to trending in one tap. It works the same as the [GIF panel's row](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/gifs/#searching-for-a-gif), and like that one it steps aside as soon as you type. **My stickers** doesn't get the row, because its pack chips already fill that job. Android has no dedicated "this is a sticker" flag. The only signal a receiving app gets is the file's MIME type, and WhatsApp in particular only recognizes its own private `image/webp.wasticker` type, not plain `image/webp`. So with **Send stickers as** set to Sticker, the keyboard offers that WhatsApp type first and falls back to a normal image if the field doesn't advertise it. A source that isn't WebP, an animated GIF result say, can never go out with the sticker MIME, because the keyboard sends a GIF as the GIF it is rather than re-encoding it. Those always send as a plain image whatever that setting says. Your own still stickers keep the shape you made them in, so most apps get them as they are. WhatsApp and Messenger are the exception: both want a sticker as a 512×512 square, so a sticker sent into either goes out as a copy letterboxed into that square, with transparent bars on the short sides. The copy is made once and kept in the cache, so sending the same sticker again doesn't redo it. A small sticker would have to be stretched to fill that square. Once the upscaler is on the phone (it downloads the first time you use **Upscale** in the [sticker editor](#the-sticker-editor) or the [photo editor](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/tools/gallery/#the-editor)), a still sticker under 384 pixels on its long side is redrawn two or four times larger first, and arrives sharp. That takes a moment on the first send and none after, since the square is kept in the cache like the plain one. If the upscaler takes longer than 20 seconds or fails, the plain square goes instead. Without the upscaler nothing is downloaded for this, and the sticker is stretched as before. If the field can't take images at all, the tool doesn't download first and fail after. It vibrates once and shows a standing notice. Results stay visible underneath at 45% opacity, so you can still long-press one to save or copy it (see [Long-pressing a sticker](#long-pressing-a-sticker) below). An animated sticker is its own case. Accepting `image/webp` and playing an animated one are two different things, and nearly every chat app does only the first: Messenger and Telegram both take the file and show one frame of it. A field can't be asked which kind it is, so the keyboard goes by the one type that is a promise. Where the field offers WhatsApp's sticker type, an animated sticker goes out as the animated WebP it is, and WhatsApp plays it. Anywhere else that takes GIFs, it goes out as a GIF, because a GIF moves in all of them. The keyboard draws the animation frame by frame and writes a 512×512 GIF with a transparent background. A toast says so, since the first send of a sticker takes a moment. The GIF is kept in the cache, so sending the same sticker again is immediate. A GIF is a rougher picture (256 colours a frame, and edges that are either there or not), and in Telegram it arrives as a GIF and not as a sticker. That is the price of it moving. If the GIF can't be made, the WebP is sent after all, still. If you've moved to another field by the time the conversion is done, the sticker is not dropped into a field you didn't send it to. If the field does take images but rejects a still sticker, the keyboard tries a format the field does take before it gives up: a still WebP goes as a PNG. Only when nothing gets through does the file land on the system clipboard with a toast telling you to paste it. That's the same thing the clipboard tool's own image and file commits do when a field refuses them. ## Long-pressing a sticker Long-pressing a KLIPY or GIPHY result opens a menu with three kinds of row. Above them, a GIPHY sticker whose uploader GIPHY names says who made it ("by @name"). - **Save to a pack**, shown as "Save to a new pack" if you have none yet, or "Save to ``" for each pack you've made. The keyboard can't pull a sticker back out of a chat someone sent you. To keep one of those, save it to your phone from the chat app, then add it with the **+** chip under [My stickers](#my-stickers-and-your-own-packs). - **Copy** puts the sticker on the system clipboard instead of into the field, to paste wherever you like. - **Report** opens a mail draft to the maintainer naming the provider, your search term, and the sticker's id and URL, with room at the top to say what's wrong with it. Nothing leaves the device on its own. The draft sits in your mail app for you to read, edit, or drop. KLIPY and GIPHY search their own catalogues, so results arrive unvetted, and this is where a bad one goes. [GIFs](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/gifs/) have the same menu, minus the save rows. Long-pressing a sticker from **My stickers** starts with what the sticker is and what finds it: its title (or "No title"), the pack it's in, its keywords, and its emoji. Below that it shows **Change title and keywords**, which opens the app on that sticker's pack with its title and keywords already up to edit, so a keyword you think of mid-chat is two taps away; save, and Back returns you to the chat. Then "Manage packs" (which jumps straight to the pack management screen covered below) and **Copy**. There's no save row, since you already have it, and no report row, since it's your own file and there's nobody to report it to. emoji/sticker-long-press-save — Long-press menu over a KLIPY result: save to a pack, copy, or report. ## My stickers and your own packs emoji/sticker-pack-manage — A sticker pack's management screen, with reorder and export controls. **My stickers** is always its own tab or chip. Your packs are never interleaved into the KLIPY or GIPHY grid, in either source layout mode. With more than one pack, a second row of filter chips (All, then one per pack name) appears above the grid, and search there matches a sticker's title, its keywords and its pack name together. The **+** chip at the end of the source chips' row, beside **My stickers**, is the quick way to add a sticker. It opens the app on the pack with the photo picker already up, so adding one sticker is a tap and a pick. The pack is the one you filtered the grid to, or your only pack if you have one. Under **All** with several packs, it asks which pack first. It sits on the source chips' row so that a single pack, with nothing to filter, costs no row of its own. When **My stickers** is your only source and there are no source chips, the **+** chip starts the pack filter row instead. With no packs yet, the empty grid's **Manage packs** button is the way in instead. Beside the **+** chip, the sparkle chip opens the [sticker generator](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/sticker-generator/): describe a sticker and the phone draws it offline, or an [image service you pick](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/sticker-generator/#engines) does, into the same pack. Building and managing packs happens in the app, not the keyboard, under Tools / Stickers / Your stickers / Sticker packs. - **New pack** starts one empty. **Import a pack** reads a `.wmstickers` file, or a `.wastickers` file made for WhatsApp. **Signal sticker packs** adds a pack made for Signal from its link, as described [below](#signal-sticker-packs). **Telegram sticker sets** does the same for a Telegram set, as described [below](#telegram-sticker-sets). **WhatsApp stickers** brings in a WhatsApp pack file or the stickers WhatsApp has saved on the phone, as described [below](#whatsapp-stickers). - **Create stickers** below the list of packs, and **Create from a prompt** inside a pack, open the [sticker generator](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/sticker-generator/). - Inside a pack, **Add stickers** opens the photo picker for up to 30 images in one trip. Each one is processed automatically. A still image keeps its own shape: anything over 1024 pixels on its long side is scaled down to that, a smaller one stays the size it is, and either way it's re-encoded as WebP, trying progressively lower quality (90 down to 50) until it lands under 400 KB. An animated source, GIF or animated WebP, is stored byte-for-byte instead, since re-compressing one would only cost quality. Those are capped at 2 MB rather than the 400 KB still budget. An animated PNG (APNG) is the one animation that is converted: nothing on Android plays an APNG and no app takes one as a sticker, so its frames are read out and rebuilt as a 512×512 animated WebP, aiming for WhatsApp's 500 KB animated budget. If the conversion fails, the first frame is kept as a still, and the result says how many stickers that happened to. Any single source file over 12 MB is refused before processing even starts. - Pick exactly one still image and it opens in the [sticker editor](#the-sticker-editor) first, instead of being added as-is. Pick several and they're all added the old way, because an editor thirty times over isn't a flow anyone wants. Either way the photo behind each sticker is kept for later editing, as described below. - Per sticker, you can set its **title** and its **keywords**, reorder it within the pack, move it to a different pack, or delete it. The title is the sticker's name, and it's what a screen reader reads out for it. Keywords are anything else you'd want to type to find it: words, short phrases or emoji. Put a comma between words and phrases ("cat, good night"). Emoji need nothing between them, so "😂🐱" is two keywords. Both fields feed the search in **My stickers**, and both can [offer the sticker while you type](#stickers-as-you-type). - To delete several stickers at once, press and hold one in the pack. That starts selecting: each tick shows in the sticker's corner, a tap adds or removes another sticker, and a bar along the bottom counts them. **Select all** ticks the whole pack, and **Delete** asks once, with the count, before removing them all. Back or the cross leaves selection without deleting anything. - Per pack, you can rename it, **export** it as a `.wmstickers` file to share or back up, or delete it. Deleting warns you to export first if you want to keep a copy. - To act on several packs, long-press one to start picking, then tap the others, or use **Select all** in the bar at the bottom. The upload icon saves the ticked packs in one `.zip` holding a `.wmstickers` file per pack; the trash icon deletes them after asking once. While picking, a tap ticks a pack instead of opening it, and the close button or Back stops picking. - A pack with stickers in it also has **Share with everyone** (the globe), which sends it to the [community repository](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/addons/community/) for anyone to install. Only share pictures you made or may pass on. - A pack tops out at 200 stickers. You can have up to 50 packs in total. ### Keywords from AI A pack you imported often comes with no keywords at all, which leaves its stickers out of [stickers as you type](#stickers-as-you-type). **Suggest keywords with AI** fills them in, using the provider picked in the [AI tool](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/tools/ai/). It's on a pack's page, for every sticker in it or, while you're selecting, for the ones you picked. On the **Sticker packs** list it covers every pack, or the packs you picked. - A sheet opens first and sends nothing until you press **Start**. It names the provider and how many requests the run takes: one per sticker. **Anything to add** is passed on to the model, for example "these are for my family chat" or "add Bengali slang". - The model is asked for up to ten keywords per sticker, in the [languages you type in](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/languages/overview/): the feeling or situation the sticker fits, what it shows, and a few emoji. It doesn't repeat the keywords the sticker already has. - Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, Ollama, LM Studio and OpenAI-compatible services see the sticker itself, sent as a still picture up to 512 pixels wide. An animated sticker sends its first frame. The model on your phone sees it too if it can read pictures, and otherwise works from the words. Brave Answers, DeepSeek and Privatemode only get the sticker's title and its pack's name, and each card says when a suggestion came from the words alone. - Each suggestion is a chip. Tap the ones you want, and type your own in **Your own keywords** under it. **Save** adds what you chose to each sticker's keywords and keeps the ones it had. Stickers you chose nothing for stay as they were. - **Stop** ends the run. The suggestions that already came back stay, and **Start** carries on with the rest. - With [Data saver](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/privacy/data-saver/) holding cloud AI back, the run stops at the first sticker and says why. ### The sticker editor The editor opens two ways: picking a single still image from **Add stickers**, or tapping a sticker you already have and choosing **Edit the image**. Animated stickers don't get it at all, since there's no still to edit and the editor works on one picture, not on a run of frames. The sticker keeps whatever shape the crop gives it, up to 1024 pixels on its long side, and there are four tabs: - **Crop**: the whole picture with a frame over it. Drag an edge or a corner to change the frame, or drag inside it to move it. The frame can be any shape, and what's inside it is what's kept, in its own proportions. Nothing is squared off or stretched. - **Erase** and **Restore**: a round brush with a size slider. Erase clears pixels to transparent, and Restore paints them back. A ring the size of the brush appears in the middle of the canvas when you switch to either tab or move the slider, then fades once you stop, so you can see what you're about to paint with before you paint with it. **Undo** goes back one stroke at a time, twelve deep. - **Border**: the white or black outline that hugs the cut-out shape, WhatsApp-style, with a width slider from 0 (off) up to 24. The brush and border sizes are measured as if the sticker were 512 pixels on its long side, so the same value looks the same on a small sticker and a large one. It traces whatever is left after erasing, so it's most useful once the background is gone. The border is a setting rather than a stroke. Sliding it back to 0 is its own undo, which is why the Undo button doesn't touch it. **Remove the background** does the cutout in one tap. It's in every build but F-Droid's, and even there the model isn't in the APK, so the first tap offers a download with a progress bar and then runs. On a phone with Google Play services the model is Google's and comes from Play services on demand. On a phone without them, or with a stand-in such as microG that doesn't carry that module, the app downloads its own instead: U²-Net-P, an open (Apache-2.0) 5 MB network, fetched from the project's data repository, checked against a fixed SHA-256 before it's used, and run entirely on the phone. On the Play Store build the interpreter that runs it is itself an extra part that Google Play delivers first (about 2 MB, shared with offline voice typing), and the one progress bar covers both. Google's is the better of the two, which is why it goes first where it's available. The downloaded model shows up as **Background remover** under Stickers on the [storage screen](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/reference/settings/about/#seeing-what-the-app-is-using), and deleting it there only means the next cutout downloads it again. If no model can be fetched, the brushes still work and the screen says so. If it finds nothing recognizable as a subject, or would keep the entire image, it says that too and leaves your picture alone rather than erasing everything. In the lite build the button isn't there at all. **Upscale** redraws a small sticker larger and sharper than stretching it would. It appears below the crop step when what you cropped is 640 pixels or less on its long side: four times the size for 256 pixels or less, twice otherwise, and the row shows the size it will make. A sticker is still kept at up to 1024 pixels when you save. The work happens on the phone, with waifu2x's network for drawings, and transparent edges are redrawn too, so the outline stays crisp. A bar shows the progress and **Cancel** stops it. The first time, the upscaler downloads: a 2.2 MB network from the project's data repository, checked against a fixed SHA-256, and on the GitHub and Play builds the engine the [sticker generator](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/sticker-generator/) runs on, if that isn't on the phone yet. After an upscale the larger picture is the one the sticker comes from: anything you erased is scaled to match, Undo can't go back past it, and a later **Edit the image** starts from it. The network shows up as **Upscaler** under **Sticker generator** on the [storage screen](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/reference/settings/about/#seeing-what-the-app-is-using). Within one editing session an edit is destructive. Cropping again after you've erased something warns you first, because a new crop throws the erasing away. Nothing is written until you press Save. Between sessions it isn't. When you add a sticker from a photo, the keyboard keeps that photo (resized to 1536px on its long edge, as WebP) alongside your packs, together with the edit you made: where you cropped, what you erased, the border, and even the brush size you were using. **Edit the image** reopens the photo with all of that still on it, so a second pass picks up where you left off instead of starting over. Change the border, widen the crop, erase a bit more, then save again. A resumed edit opens on the **Erase** tab rather than **Crop**, since the crop is already made and a stray drag there is the one gesture that would throw the erasing away. **Undo** starts empty each time you open the editor, because it only covers the strokes of this session. "Crop again" is what clears an old cut-out, and it asks first. Stickers that arrived some other way (saved from KLIPY or GIPHY, imported in a pack) have no separate photo behind them, so they reopen as themselves. The first time you edit one, the version you're replacing is kept as its original, and from then on it resumes like any other. None of this leaves the phone. Exporting a `.wmstickers` pack writes the manifest and the finished stickers only, the settings backup's sticker section walks the same list, and Android's own cloud backup and device transfer skip the folder entirely. It does take up space, so About / Storage / Sticker packs lists it as its own row ("Images you made stickers from"). Delete only that row to get the space back while keeping every sticker. Deleting it costs the resumable edits too, and those stickers go back to reopening as themselves. ## Stickers as you type You don't have to open the sticker tool to send one of your own stickers. Type its title in a chat, or one of its keywords, or one of its emoji, and the keyboard shows it. Tap it and it's sent. This is only for stickers in your own packs, and it all happens on the phone. Nothing is searched online. - **The title counts only when you've typed all of it.** A sticker called "grumpy cat" shows up after "grumpy cat", not after "grumpy". If you want a shorter way in, add "grumpy" or "grr" as a keyword. A keyword can be as short as you like. - **Words have to be whole words.** A sticker with the keyword "cat" shows up for "my cat" but not for "concat" or "cats". Capitals don't matter. - **Emoji work anywhere.** A 😂 keyword fires right after "lol😂", with no space needed. Skin tones don't matter either way, so a 👍 sticker shows up for 👍🏽 too. - **The longest match comes first.** With one sticker called "happy birthday" and another with the keyword "birthday", typing "happy birthday" shows both, the first one first. Within one match, stickers whose title it is come before stickers that only have it as a keyword. Up to 24 show at once. - **Only in fields that can take a picture.** If a chat app's message box doesn't accept images, nothing shows, because a sticker couldn't be sent there anyway. Password fields never get it. - **Untagged stickers can be tagged for you.** With [Search by meaning](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/smart/search-by-meaning/) set to **Text and pictures** and **Tag my stickers** on, a sticker with no title and no keywords gets a few from what it shows, such as 🐈 and "cat", and comes up for them. Your own keywords are never changed. - **It works from the emoji panel too.** Pick an emoji in the panel that one of your stickers has as a keyword or title, and that sticker shows in a row above the panel. In the panel only emoji count. Words you typed before you opened it don't. **Where they show** has three choices: - **Tray** (the default) is a row of large stickers at the top of the keyboard, above every other row. It slides in when something matches and slides away when nothing does, and the word suggestions stay where they are. The ✕ at the end hides it. To put it somewhere else, drag **Sticker suggestions** in Rows & bars / Row order. It can go anywhere, below the keys included. - **On the strip** puts three small stickers on the suggestion strip, next to the word suggestions. If there are more, a **+N** button opens the tray with all of them. - **One chip** is a small chip on the strip that says how many stickers match. Tap it to open the tray. In the two strip styles, a long press on the stickers or the chip hides them. **Hold a sticker in the tray to see it bigger.** It shows large above the keyboard, with its title under it. Keep your finger down and slide along the tray, and each sticker you pass shows large in turn. Lift your finger and it closes. Nothing is sent, so tap the sticker when you've found the one you want. A slide that starts before the hold scrolls the tray as usual. Turn this off with **Hold to see them bigger**, and a hold does nothing. **After you send one** decides what happens to the text that asked for the sticker. **Remove the typed text** (the default) takes the title, keyword or emoji back out of the message box, so "see you 👋" becomes "see you " once the 👋 sticker has gone out. **Keep the typed text** leaves it where it is. Either way, once you've sent a sticker or hidden the tray, the same text doesn't bring it back. Type something else and it's live again. The sticker goes out the same way it would from the sticker panel, with **Send stickers as** deciding between a sticker and a plain image. ### Importing a `.wmstickers` file A `.wmstickers` file is a ZIP with a `pack.json` manifest and one image per sticker. Opening one, from **Import a pack** or from a file manager, first shows every sticker in it on a page of its own, all ticked. Tap a sticker to leave it out, or use **Select none** and tick the few you want. Only the ticked stickers are converted and added when you press **Add**, which matters for a pack of animated stickers: each animation takes a while to convert, and the ones you leave out cost nothing. The same page opens for a `.wastickers` file. Pick several files at once, or a `.zip` of packs saved with the bar's upload icon, and the page is skipped: every sticker of every pack is added, and one message counts the packs and names any file it could not read. Import forgives hand-written or slightly malformed manifests, repairing what it can rather than rejecting the whole file, and it reports what happened: - Imported successfully, with a note of anything it had to fix along the way. - "The app cannot read any sticker in that pack." if the manifest named stickers but none of them survived. Import reports that rather than quietly creating an empty pack. - "That file is not a WM Keyboard sticker pack." if the format tag doesn't match. - "You already have 50 sticker packs. Delete one first." if you're at the pack limit. An import is also capped against oversized or booby-trapped files: at most 500 entries and 64 MB total per archive. ### Signal sticker packs Packs made for Signal (and for Molly, which is Signal under another name) can become packs of your own. Signal has no sticker shop. A pack is public to whoever holds its link, and the link is all there is: `https://signal.art/addstickers/#pack_id=...&pack_key=...`. The second half of that link is the key the stickers are encrypted with, so the link is both the address and the way in. Open Tools / Stickers / Your stickers / Sticker packs / Signal sticker packs. There are two ways in from there: - **Add a pack from a link** takes a pasted link. The `sgnl://addstickers?...` form that Signal itself opens works too. You can also share a pack link to WM Keyboard from a browser or a chat, or paste it into **Import from a link** on the Add-ons screen. All of them end up in the same place. The field never fills itself from the clipboard. - **Find packs on signalstickers.org** opens the community's gallery in your browser. That is where the thousands of packs people have made are listed, with its own search and its Latest, Trending and Most viewed orders. Press **Add to Signal** on a pack there and Android asks which app should open it. Pick **Add stickers to WM Keyboard**. If Signal and Molly aren't installed, it opens WM Keyboard straight away. The gallery is run by volunteers, not by Signal and not by this project, and the keyboard never reads it: you browse it like any other website. The keyboard offers no list of packs of its own, not even the ones Signal ships with. A sticker stays the work of whoever drew it, and the packs built into Signal are art Signal commissioned and keeps the rights to. So a pack only gets here because you brought its link, the same as any picture you add to a pack yourself. Add packs you may use. What opens next is a preview and not an import: the pack's name, who made it, how many stickers it holds, and the stickers themselves. Every sticker starts ticked, and a tap on one leaves it out; **Select all** and **Select none** sit above the grid. Only the ticked stickers are downloaded and converted, and with some left out the button reads "Add 12 stickers" instead. Nothing is kept until you press **Add this pack**. After that the pack sits in **Your packs** like any other. You can rename it, edit its stickers, export it as a `.wmstickers` file, and send from it in every app, not only in Signal. Each sticker keeps the emoji its maker gave it as a keyword, so typing 😂 in **My stickers** finds the ones tagged with it, and typing 😂 in a chat [offers them](#stickers-as-you-type). Open the same link again and the preview offers to open your copy instead of adding a second one. The stickers come from Signal's sticker storage, the same place a Signal client gets them from when you tap a pack link there. No Signal account is involved and nothing about you is sent, only the pack's id. Every file is checked against the key from the link before it is opened, so a file that was changed on the way is refused. A link whose key doesn't fit says so, and so does a pack that Signal no longer has. While [Data saver](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/privacy/data-saver/) is on, the preview asks before its first request. That one answer covers the pictures and the import. Stickers are made to fit the same way as any other you add: a still WebP no more than 1024 pixels on its long side and under 400 KB is kept as it is, and anything else is resized and re-encoded. Animated Signal stickers are APNG files, which Android can't play and which no other app accepts as a sticker. Each one is converted to an animated WebP as it is added, frame for frame and with the same timing, so it moves in **My stickers** and goes out to WhatsApp as a real animated sticker. Other apps get it as a GIF, as described under [Searching and sending](#searching-and-sending). In the preview, before you add the pack, animated stickers already play, so you can tell what kind of pack it is. Every frame is encoded again, so this is the slow half of adding an animated pack, and it is what the "Adding N of M" half of the progress row is counting. On Android 8.1 and older the grid shows an animated WebP as a still, but it is still sent animated. ### Telegram sticker sets Sticker sets made for Telegram, and its sets of custom emoji, can become packs of your own too. A set is shared as a link, `https://t.me/addstickers/` (or `https://t.me/addemoji/` for emoji), and the name at the end is all there is to it. Unlike Signal, Telegram has no open storage that a set can be read from. The one way in that needs no Telegram account is a bot: a free Telegram account meant for programs, which the Bot API lets ask for any public set. So you make a bot once, and the keyboard asks Telegram for sets through it. The keyboard never signs in to your own Telegram account and does nothing else with the bot. Open Tools / Stickers / Your stickers / Sticker packs / Telegram sticker sets. 1. Press **Make a bot with @BotFather**. It opens Telegram's bot that makes bots. Send it `/newbot`, then a display name, then a username that ends in `bot`. 2. @BotFather answers with a token, which looks like `123456789:AAE...`. Copy all of it into **Bot token**. The field says so if what you pasted can't be a token. 3. **Add a set from a link** now takes a pasted link, or only the set's name. In Telegram, open a set, press the menu, and press **Copy link** to get one. The `tg://addstickers?set=...` form Telegram opens works too, and Android offers WM Keyboard as **Add stickers to WM Keyboard** when you press **Open in Telegram** on a `t.me/addstickers` page in a browser. You can also share a set link to WM Keyboard, or paste it into **Import from a link** on the Add-ons screen. The field never fills itself from the clipboard. The token is yours and stays on this device. It is left out of backups unless you turn on **Include API keys**, the same as the other keys. There is no built-in token: one token shared by every copy of the app would be one that Telegram could block for everybody at once. If you revoke the token in @BotFather, the screen tells you that Telegram no longer takes it. As with Signal, what opens is a preview: the set's title, how many stickers it holds, and the stickers, with the animated ones already playing. Video stickers show the still Telegram made of them. As with Signal, every sticker starts ticked and a tap leaves one out. Leaving out the animated and video stickers you don't want is what makes a big set quick to add, since those are the ones converted to animated WebP on the way in. Nothing is kept until you press **Add this set**. Each sticker keeps its emoji as a keyword, so it is [offered while you type](#stickers-as-you-type) like any other. Opening the same set again offers your copy instead of a second one. The keyboard offers no list of sets of its own. Sets are other people's work, so add the ones you may use. Telegram has three kinds of sticker, and each becomes one you can send in every app: - **Still stickers** are WebP pictures, kept as they are when they are small enough, and resized like any other picture when they are not. - **Animated stickers** are `.tgs` files: animations drawn from shapes, made in After Effects and saved for the Lottie player. No other app accepts one. Each is drawn frame by frame, at up to 30 frames a second, and saved as an animated WebP. - **Video stickers** are short `.webm` videos with a see-through background. Android's video decoder throws the transparency away, which would put every one of them on a black square, so the keyboard reads the transparency out of the file on its own and puts it back on each frame. They become animated WebP as well. Turning animated and video stickers into WebP is the slow part of adding a set, and the "Adding N of M" half of the progress row counts it. A sticker that cannot be converted is kept as its first frame, and the result says how many that happened to. Like animated Signal stickers, the result goes to WhatsApp as a real animated sticker and to other apps as a GIF. The requests go to Telegram's Bot API, `api.telegram.org`, and carry your bot token and the name of the set. While [Data saver](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/privacy/data-saver/) is on, the preview asks before its first request. ### Emotic reaction images [Emotic](https://f-droid.org/packages/futuristicgoo.emotic/) keeps reaction images, which it calls emotipics, beside its emoticons. Importing an Emotic export from Emoji / Emoji panel / Kaomoji / Import puts its faces in your [kaomoji library](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/kaomoji/#importing-from-emotic-and-other-files) and its images in a new pack named Emotic. Each image keeps its Emotic tags as keywords, so it shows up in search and [as you type](#stickers-as-you-type). Images marked as excluded in Emotic are left out, and an image past 20 MB is refused. ### WhatsApp stickers WhatsApp doesn't share its sticker packs with other apps. A pack gets into WhatsApp through another app's content provider, and only WhatsApp is allowed to read that provider; the packs WhatsApp itself ships, and the ones you've marked as favourites, live in its private database. No app can read either without root, and this keyboard doesn't try. Two things on the phone *are* open, and Tools / Stickers / Your stickers / Sticker packs / WhatsApp stickers reads both. Nothing leaves the phone, and WhatsApp doesn't learn about any of it. - **Open a .wastickers file.** This is the pack file the sticker-maker apps export: Sticker Maker, Personal Stickers for WhatsApp, and the desktop tools that imitate them all write it. It's a plain ZIP with a `title.txt`, an `author.txt`, the tray icon as a small PNG, and one WebP (or PNG) per sticker. Export or share a pack from the app you made it in, then open the file here, tap it in a file manager, or share it to WM Keyboard from the share sheet. It opens on a page of every sticker in the pack, with its title and who made it at the top, all ticked. Untick the ones you don't want and only the rest are added. The title becomes the pack's name. The author is shown once and not kept, because a pack here has no author field. The tray icon is left out, found by its name (`tray.png`, `cover.png`, `icon.png`) or, when it's named something else, by being the one PNG among WebPs. A pack made entirely of PNGs keeps every picture, so a tray named by a timestamp in one of those arrives as a small extra sticker rather than a real sticker being dropped. **Import a pack** on the Sticker packs screen takes the same file, so you don't have to know which of the two formats you were handed. - **Add the stickers that WhatsApp saved.** WhatsApp keeps a copy of every sticker you've sent or received under `Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Stickers` (WhatsApp Business uses `com.whatsapp.w4b` instead). That folder carries a `.nomedia` marker, so the photo picker that **Add stickers** uses never shows these files. The system's folder picker does, and this row opens it there. Confirm the folder and every WebP in it shows on a page, newest first, with the newest 200 ticked, since a pack holds 200. Untick what you don't want, or tick others instead, and the ticked ones become one pack called "WhatsApp stickers". Tick more than 200 and the pack keeps the first 200, and the result says how many were left out. Stickers that were made for WhatsApp are already 512×512 WebP files, so they're kept byte for byte, animated ones included. The keyboard reads the folder once and keeps no access to it afterwards. - **Pick stickers for one of your packs** opens the system's file picker in the same folder with multi-select on, and adds the ones you choose to a pack you already have, or to a new one it asks you to name. The precise route when the folder holds far more than you want. Neither the file nor the folder carries emoji or keywords, so stickers arrive with none. Give them some from the pack's own screen if you want them [offered while you type](#stickers-as-you-type). Since WhatsApp packs are other people's work as much as Signal packs are, add the ones you may use. Sticker packs are an optional section of the app's full settings backup. They're off by default, because images make the backup file large. Turn them on in the Backup screen if you want packs included, or export a pack individually from its own screen instead. ## Options Tools / Stickers Stickers, GIFs and emoji mixes are one bundle on [Extensions](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/reference/settings/extensions/). Off there, the three panels, the pack screens and the generator leave the keyboard and the app together; your packs stay on the phone. Stickers isn't pinned to the toolbar by default. It lives in the toolbox alongside GIFs until you pin it. Reach the settings below from **Tools** in the app. - **Sticker packs** jumps to the pack management screen above. Only shown under Stickers, not under GIFs. - **Full-screen picker**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout, default **on**. The toolbar, emoji row, and symbol row step aside and the search box moves into the row they leave behind, so the grid gets the full keyboard height. Shared with the GIF tool. - **Stickers per row**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout, 1 to 6, default **3**. The most stickers side by side. Fewer makes each one bigger. The GIF tool has its own **GIFs per row**. - **Gap between cells**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout, 0 to 12 dp, default **4 dp**. The space around each sticker. Shared with the GIF tool. - **Panel height**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout, default **Same as keyboard**. The emoji panel's setting, here too because the bar on top of the panel drags it. - **Remember the last search**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout, default **on**. Reopening the panel lands on the search and category it was left on; off, it opens on trending. Shared with the GIF tool. - **Hide the search when you scroll**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout, default **off**. Scrolling down the results folds the search box and the chips away, and scrolling up brings them back. Shared with the GIF tool. - **Panel layout**, under Tools / Stickers / Layout. Opens the sticker panel's layout editor. **Standard** ends the way the emoji panel ends. - **Providers**, at the top of Tools / Stickers: KLIPY, GIPHY and **My stickers**, in the order the panel asks them. Add, reorder, switch off or set up each one, as in every [provider list](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/tools/providers/). KLIPY and GIPHY need an API key unless the build carries one, and their keys are shared with the GIF tool. KLIPY replaced Tenor after Tenor's API was retired. - **Offer your stickers as you type**, under Tools / Stickers / Suggest while typing, default **on**. Only shown under Stickers. See [Stickers as you type](#stickers-as-you-type). While it's on, two more rows sit under it: - **Where they show**: Tray, On the strip or One chip, default **Tray**. - **After you send one**: Remove the typed text or Keep the typed text, default **Remove the typed text**. - **Hold to see them bigger**, default **on**: hold a sticker in the tray to see it large, and slide to see the others. - **Send stickers as**, under Tools / Stickers / Sending, Sticker or Image, default **Sticker**. Only shown under Stickers, since it governs what the sticker panel commits. The GIF panel has its own **Send GIFs as** on its own page. - **How to use them**, in the provider list: Tabs, Mixed or One at a time, default **Tabs**. Tabs gives every provider its own chip, including My stickers. Mixed collapses the online providers into one "Online" chip and keeps My stickers as a chip of its own. GIPHY keeps its own chip in Mixed mode too, since its terms forbid mixing its results with another service's. One at a time shows the first online provider that answers and asks the next one only if it fails. - **Content filter**, Off/Low/Medium/High, default **High**. Maps to KLIPY's and GIPHY's own content rating. - **Results for each search**, under Tools / Stickers / Results: a slider from 6 to 48, default **24**. It sets how many stickers one search or the trending view loads. Your own packs ignore it, so **My stickers** always shows everything that matches, however long the list. Shared with the GIF tool. Both tools are among the ones the setup wizard suggests enabling, and neither needs a particular build. What an API key gates is the online half. The GIF panel has nothing to show without one, while **My stickers** needs no key at all, so the sticker tool never lands on a "needs an API key" notice the way the GIF tool can. ## Details and edge cases - **The WhatsApp sticker MIME is an unofficial, undocumented contract.** `image/webp.wasticker` appears in no public spec. It's a private convention both WhatsApp and Gboard happen to implement, and it can change without notice, which is why there's a fallback chain rather than a single hardcoded rule. - **A field that only takes images, not stickers, still gets a normal image.** The sticker-versus-image choice is best-effort on top of whatever the field actually advertises. Nothing is dropped over a MIME mismatch alone. The clipboard fallback only kicks in when every image MIME candidate is rejected. - **Save and report don't apply to your own stickers.** Long-pressing something from My stickers offers pack management and Copy only. There's nothing to save (you already have it) and nothing to report (nobody served it to you). - **A source already at spec is left alone.** If a picked image is already a still WebP of 1024 pixels or less on its long side and under 400 KB, it's stored as-is rather than re-encoded. - **Stickers made before this change stay square.** They were letterboxed into 512×512 when they were added. Open one in the editor and drag the crop frame to the shape you want, then save. Where the photo it was made from is still on file, the editor opens that, so nothing is lost to the old square. - **One process, one store, but two independent views of it.** The keyboard and the settings app run in the same app process and share the same on-disk pack store, so every mutator saves immediately rather than batching. Each side still caches its own snapshot of the packs. The keyboard checks a cheap size-and-timestamp signal against the manifest and only reloads when that changed, rather than re-parsing it on every keystroke. - **Content filter doesn't get a restore button.** Every other row on this screen grows [a small restore button](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/reference/settings/#putting-one-setting-back) once you move it off its shipped value. The filter is drawn as a bare segmented row under a heading rather than as a full setting row, so there's nowhere to hang one. Undo it by picking High back yourself. The provider list has **Reset to default** instead. - **Packs need the device unlocked.** Sticker packs live in app-private storage that isn't available before you unlock the device after a restart, so the sticker tool isn't usable from a locked-screen field the way some other tools are. See also [GIFs](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/gifs/) for the tool this one shares its settings and layout with, and [Emoji picker & search](https://wmkeyboard.pages.dev/emoji/picker/) for the other route into expressive content on this keyboard.