How to turn your photos into stickers in iOS 17

Last year, iOS 16 gave us the ability to cut subjects out of our photos. It was fun! But it wasn’t totally clear what you should do with them. That changes in iOS 17, which is still in public beta at the moment. You can download it now or wait until the full release this fall, but in either case, you’ll find one excellent way to use your photo cutouts: turn them into stickers.

I know. I was skeptical, too. But you have to trust me on this: stickers in iOS 17 are well worth your time, particularly in iMessage. You’re going to thrill and impress all of your friends when you turn a grumpy picture of your cat into a tapback reaction, and everyone will want to know how you did it. You can tell ‘em we told you, or just keep it to yourself and take all the credit like some kind of Apple Genius Bar genius. No judgment.

Here’s how to do it. (I followed these steps on an iPhone 13 Mini running the iOS 17 developer beta.)

You can retrieve your stickers anytime using Apple’s iOS keyboard. Just tap the smiley icon where you access emoji and scroll all the way to the left of the Frequently Used panel. There, you’ll find any stickers you’ve used recently, as well as a shortcut to access all of your stickers. Just tap the sticker you want to use — but be aware that, outside of iMessage, they’ll just appear as PNG images. The best way to use them is in the walled garden of Apple’s messaging app: