How To Add Stickers or Emoji to Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are a way for users to express their individualism and creativity beyond simple posts. Although Stories only last for a short time, Instagram users take them seriously and spend a lot of time perfecting them.

To add even more flare, you can add stickers and emojis to your Instagram Story. These cartoonish icons add depth to your Story. In this article we’ll show you how to add stickers and emojis to your Instagram Story.

Adding Stickers or Emoji to Instagram Stories

Let’s start with the basics. If you’re looking to add an image to your Instagram Story, there are several different ways to access the camera interface for your temporary posts. Once you’re inside the Instagram feed on your account, you can do any of these things to open the camera interface.

How to Add Stickers

1. Tap on the plus icon in the upper right-hand corner of Instagram.
   
2. Scroll over to ‘Story’ at the bottom of the page. Click the record icon to record the content you want to post. You can also tap on the upload icon in the lower left-hand corner to add content you’ve already created.
   
3. Tap on the Sticker icon at the top of the next page.
   
4. Tap on the sticker of your choice.
   
5. Long-press the sticker icon to position it where you want it in your Story. You can also throw it away by dragging it to the trash icon.
   

Once you’ve taken the snapshot or recorded the video you want to post to your story, you’ll be given the opportunity to edit your capture. Since we’re looking to add stickers and emoji to our photo, we’ll cover these one at a time.

Stickers Explained

You’ll find a bunch of content in the Stickers folder, often changing in or out depending on the day and time of year, but here are just a few examples of the types of stickers you’ll find in Instagram Stories.

• Location: When you tap on location, you’ll be brought to a location-lookup display, where you can search for different areas around the world, including hotspots that happen to be near you. The customization seen here is really nice. Instead of relying on an app like Snapchat to have a geofilter ready for your area, you can simply rely on yourself to enter the correct data. Once you’ve selected your own location, you can cycle between designs, logos, and more to set your sticker.
• Weather: Unlike on Snapchat, the weather isn’t so much a filter as it is a sticker. We love this—the ability to not have the temperature permanently in the center frame of your image is an excellent addition. Once you’ve selected the weather, you can cycle through a ton of designs and options for how you want the weather to look. Once you’ve made your decision, you can zoom in and out of your sticker, move it to the corner or side of your display, and really make it feel like your own. Compared to Snapchat’s own version of the weather, we much prefer Instagram’s implementation of this sticker.

• #Hashtag: Alright, this is pretty cool. Since Instagram is one of two social networks that led to the popularity and prominence of hashtags (Twitter being the other), Instagram Stories has the ability to add a hashtag sticker to your story. Once you select the sticker from your lineup, you’ll be asked to input your own text into the sticker. This can be anything you’d like it to be, and Instagram will add suggestions as you type for popular or trending hashtags.
• Day of the Week: This operates exactly how Snapchat’s own Day of the Week filter works, though Instagram allows you to move, zoom, and control how the sticker looks.

There are a lot more stickers spread over two pages, typically offering fancy or time-based designs, like watermelon slices for the summer, along with hats and glasses you can place over your own selfies. You can have as many stickers as you’d like on your story as you’d like, though the more you add, the busier your image will be.

All of them can be dragged around the screen as you’d like, some of them can have different designs by tapping on the sticker itself to cycle through the variations. And if you accidentally make a mistake in your sticker choice, dragging the sticker to the bottom of your display will delete the sticker completely.

How to Add Emojis

Adding emojis to your Instagram Story isn’t as easy as one might think. Unlike the stickers option, there’s no direct link to emojis. What you’ll need to do instead is use the text option.

Here’s how to add emojis to your Instagram Story.

1. Following the same steps above, tap on the plus icon to start your Story.
   
2. Toggle the switch to ‘Story.’
   
3. Record or upload the content you want.
4. Tap on the ‘Aa’ text icon in the upper right-hand corner.
   
5. Tap on the emoji icon on your device’s keyboard and start adding the emojis you like.
   

Posting Your Story

Once you’ve decided you like how your shot is designed with stickers and emoji, you can either post your photo directly to your story or hit the next button in the bottom right-hand corner of your display to make a few choices on where the image goes. Here are your options:

• Hitting “Next” will load a display that allows you to send your image directly to your followers. You can start a group, send individually to multiple people, or search through names to select. If you’ve never used direct messages, they essentially function just like Snapchat’s standard snap sending service (try saying that five times fast). Your recipients will get the message, and once the photo has been viewed, it will disappear forever. You can also add the photo to your story from this message.
• If you just want to add the photo directly to your story, instead of hitting the “Next” button, hit “Your Story” in the bottom left-hand corner of the display. Hitting “Save” will also save the photo directly to your device.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can’t I add stickers?

If you’re having trouble adding stickers you may want to reach out to Instagram Support. But first, there are a few things you can try.

As always, check to make sure the application is up-to-date. An outdated application can have problems because the developers regularly release these updates to fix bugs and security issues. Head over to the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store and check for the ‘Update’ button. If the only option is to open the app, Instagram is up-to-date.

Next, try restarting the app. Simply close it out and reopen it. If this doesn’t work, restart your phone.

Next, clear the cache (Android) or offload the app (iPhone). This won’t erase your login information or any of your Instagram data. But it will get rid of cached data that’s causing problems.

Lastly, before reaching out to Instagram support, visit the DownDetector website or Instagram’s Twitter page. This may be a system-wide issue meaning you’ll have to wait for the developers to fix it.