iOS 10: Four Tips for Getting Started With iMessage Stickers and Apps

With iOS 10, Apple gave iMessage a much-needed upgrade to the 21st century of messaging. Numerous competitors have blazed trails with all sorts of innovative features, from stickers to ride-sharing, and even built-in mini-apps and games. Billions of people have been using these apps—such as Line, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger—for years, and Apple has finally responded in the most Apple way possible—by building a full platform for iMessage stickers and apps.

But how do we download iMessage apps? Once we do, how do we use them? And what are these newfangled ‘stickers’ anyway? I’m glad you asked. Let’s explore the basics of how to find, manage, and use iMessage apps and stickers.

1. What are stickers and apps?

The first thing to clear up is that the iMessage App Store stocks two types of products: apps and stickers. When people talk about them in a broad sense though, they may simply refer to both as “iMessage apps” to cut down on syllables.

iMessage apps are a lot like regular apps—they can do things like make lists, grab content from the internet, play games, even buy things with Apple Pay. The big deal is that, instead of switching in and out of other apps, you use iMessage apps right inside your conversations (note: you need blue bubbles for iMessage apps to work, not green).

iMessage stickers are kinda like jumbo-sized emoji, but with some neat perks. First, they can be animated in delightful ways, though not all will be; sticker makers usually state this somewhere. Second, an Apple innovation is that you and your iMessage recipients can tap-and-drag stickers on top of each other in the conversation, or even onto text messages. Third, like emoji, stickers originated largely in Japan, where they’ve been immensely popular for years. Line, for example, has had Stars Wars stickers for at least the last three years I’ve used it. Paul McCartney has a pack there, too. Not kidding.

An iMessage conversation in stickers and GIFs

The point is: while emoji took quite a while to catch on in the US, then a while longer to go mainstream, companies have been well versed in stickers already. If there isn’t already an iMessage sticker pack for your favorite movie, sports team, comic book, or other fandom, I guarantee at least one is in the works.

2. Say it with stickers and apps

A key detail with iMessage apps and stickers is that they can be installed stand-alone, by themselves, with no app on your home screen to manage them. However, like Today screen widgets, iMessage apps can also be installed by a parent app you download from the store, such as Fandango, Copied (a great clipboard utility), and GIFwrapped, a GIF search app and organizer.

To start using iMessage apps and stickers, simply open an existing conversation or start a new one. To the left of the text entry box are now three icons: the camera, a heart with two fingers on it (for sharing scribbles and your heartbeat), and an app icon. If you don’t see these three icons, you might see an arrow pointing right, towards the text box. Tap that, and it should reveal these three icons.

iMessage Drawer

Tap the app icon, and you should now see the “app drawer,” which contains the iMessage apps and stickers that are installed. Apple gives you a few sticker packs to start with—a pack of animated smileys, another pack of old-school Apple icons, etc.—and the first thing you see is probably one of these. Tap a sticker to add it to your text box, then tap the blue send arrow to start stickerin’.

iMessage stickers from David Lanham and Impending

Next: Switching Between Stickers and Apps, Deleting Apps

Page 2 – Switching Between Stickers and Apps, Deleting Apps

3. Switch between iMessage stickers and apps

Like the emoji keyboard, you can swipe left and right in this drawer to switch between individual iMessage apps and sticker packs. All you have to do is tap an app or sicker to start placing them in your conversations.

There are already too many iMessage apps to cover how each one works. But in my experience, they usually do a pretty good job of explaining exactly which features they support inside iMessage, then getting you started. Play around with the ones you have, as you can’t really break anything.

iMessage sticker and app management

4. Install, manage, and remove iMessage apps

By now I’m sure your iMessage appetite is growing, so let’s get downloading.

Get more apps

You visit the iMessage App Store in iMessage. While in the app drawer, tap the small grid icon in the lower left. This displays a sort of homescreen-like view with icons of each of the apps and sticker packs that are installed. Make sure you’re in the first (left-most) page here, and there should be a Store button in the upper left.

Tap the store button, and you’ll get a familiar App-Store-like screen filled with iMessage apps and stickers. Some of these might be attached to full apps that will also appear on your homescreen if you download, but this is an iMessage-first view of the store.

The iMessage App Store on iPad

Many sticker packs are paid, while some give a few stickers away for free and lock all the good stuff away behind an IAP. App prices can go either way, depending on whether their parent app has a price. If you buy a paid app in the iMessage App Store, you essential buy the parent app and installing the iMessage app along with it.

Manage and delete

Like your iPhone’s homescreen, you can long-tap on one icon to make them all jiggle. To change the order in which your apps and stickers appear in the app drawer, tap and hold one to drag it around. If you want to delete an app or sticker, tap the little (X) button that appears on each icon in this jiggly mode. Finally, to exit the iMessage App Jiggly Mode (I’m sure that’s a technical term), press your device’s home button.

If you would rather hide an iMessage app from your drawer, but not necessarily delete it, go back to the iMessage App Store. A tab along the top is called Manage. This is where you can toggle an app’s visibility in the drawer, as well as the option for regular apps to automatically install and enable their iMessage versions. If you want to drink from the iMessage app fire hose, enable this option. If you’d rather take a more conservative approach, feel free to leave it off. Just remember that you’ll have to come back here each time you want to enable a new iMessage app.

Welcome to the new iMessage

This should be enough to get you started, so have fun. I’ve made to-do lists with multiple friends and played a couple games of TicTacToe in iMessage, and that was just on day one. If you’re looking for some of my favorites to play with, I think you can’t go wrong with Sticker Pals, Star Wars, and Drafts, a great “idea scratchpad” and text sharing app that can now put all your notes just a tap away, right in iMessage.

It took Apple a while to catch up with today’s messaging scene, but boy did it ever. I have a hunch developers are only getting started with what’s possible here. If you use iMessage, definitely keep an eye out for some fun and useful stuff to come.

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