How to make an iMessage Sticker Pack (Xcode 8)

Dope Sticker Pack now available in the App Store

If your iPhone uses iOS 10, you might have played with some of the cool new iMessaging features such as link previews, drawing with your finger, send reactions to photos, and send stickers.

The process of making an iMessage sticker pack is simple: step 1) make a bunch of images that you want to become stickers, step 2) put the images into an iMessage extension in Xcode and step 3) get them ready to submit to the App Store.

Step 1: Make a bunch of images that you want to become stickers

I highly suggest you make your own images and not steal them from the internet. I’m not as artistic as I wish I could be, so my sticker images were created by my talented friend Lori Hoffman, who used Sketch.

Here are key things to keep in mind:

Formats acceptable for stickers: .png, .apng, .gif, .jpeg. I used .png for my sticker pack.

Sizes acceptable for stickers: small (300px by 300px), medium (408px by 408px) and large (618px by 618px). I chose to use small stickers.

Naming is important: the names of the stickers cannot have any special characters or underscores. (i.e. instead of hard_shelled_taco.png use hardshelledtaco.png.)

Step 2: Put the images into an iMessage extension in Xcode

Open up a new project and select “Sticker Pack Application”

I made an example sticker pack: BlogStickerPack, to illustrate these steps. In Xcode (make sure you have Xcode 8.o+), open up a new project and select “Sticker Pack Application.”

In the Stickers.xcstickers folder, drag in your sticker images.

After you’ve given your project a name, click on the blue Stickers.xcstickers folder in the navigation area and drag in your sticker images into the editor area.

Here’s my one lonely sticker image.

Now, run your app. The simulator should open to iMessage. Click on the text field and choose the iMessage app button (in blue)

Aw yeah, a sticker in iMessage.

You can even play around by clicking on your sticker images and putting them in a fake iMessage with Kate Bell.

That’s what I’m taco-ing about!

Step 3: Get them ready to submit to the App Store.

I‘ll assume that if you have Xcode on your computer that you’re somewhat serious about iOS programming and might have already forked over the annual $99 fee for an Apple Developer account.

All that’s left to do is make an iMessage App Icon and you’re ready to archive and submit to the App Store. For app icons, I use MakeAppIcon because you can drag and drop one image and MakeAppIcon will email you all the sizes you need for all iOS devices.

Note: make sure your app icon has a background (else it will show up with a black background and iTunes connect will reject the image).

Here’s a link to my Dope Sticker Pack in the App Store. Leave a comment below with your sticker packs!

Resources:

iMessage Apps — Apple Documentation