WhatsApp sticker maker
Turn photos into WhatsApp stickers that actually import — 512×512 WebP, under 100 KB, with the tray icon and a ready-made pack.
Drop your file here
Processed securely and deleted within the hour.
The limits are hard, and they are not documented on the sticker app
WhatsApp will reject a sticker without telling you which one or why. The requirements are exact, and they come from WhatsApp's own pack validator rather than from guesswork:
- 512 × 512 pixels exactly. Not "about", not "at most" — exactly.
- WebP format, with transparency.
- 100 KB per sticker at most, which is the constraint that bites.
- A 96 × 96 tray icon under 50 KB, as the pack's thumbnail.
- 3 to 30 stickers per pack. Fewer than three is not a pack.
One detail worth being precise about: "100 KB" is ambiguous, and the two readings differ by 2,400 bytes — 2.4% of the entire budget on a format where every byte counts. WhatsApp's validator source settles it at 1024 bytes to the kilobyte, so the real ceiling is 102,400. Reading it the other way throws away quality for nothing.
How the size limit is met
A 512 × 512 photograph with a transparent background does not fit inside 100 KB by accident. So the encoder quality is searched, not guessed.
Lossless is tried first, because flat artwork — a drawing, a logo, a meme — is very often both smaller and perfect that way, and a lossy pass would discard quality for no gain. Where that does not fit, the quality is found by bisection: about seven encodes to land on the highest quality that stays inside the limit, rather than a slow walk down from 100.
On a detailed photograph that typically lands at 99 KB of the 100 available — using nearly the whole budget without going over, which is the point. The result tells you the largest sticker's size so you can see how much headroom you had.
The white outline is not decoration
WhatsApp asks for an 8-pixel stroke around the subject, and the reason is practical: a sticker sits on whatever wallpaper the recipient has chosen. A dark-haired person cut out of a photo simply disappears against a dark background. The outline is what makes a cut-out readable on any of them.
It is done by growing the transparency mask evenly in every direction and painting the ring that appears, so corners stay corners. A blur-and-threshold — the cheaper approach — rounds off every edge and gives everything a soft, melted look.
The subject is found from the transparency, not the frame
This is the detail that separates home-made stickers from ones that look right. A cut-out photo is mostly empty space, so scaling the whole image to fit 512 × 512 leaves the subject as a small shape adrift in a large transparent square. Next to a real sticker it looks shrunken.
So the opaque region is measured and that is what gets fitted to the square, with your chosen margin around it. Upscaling is capped at twice the original: past that a small source turns to mush and the extra pixels only spend file size, which is the scarce resource.
Background removal, or bring your own
Backgrounds are removed with the same model as remove background — u2net, which is permissively licensed. Turn it off if you already have transparent PNGs, and it will use them as they are.
A sticker with its background still attached will import perfectly happily and will look like a photograph stuck onto the conversation, which is usually not the intention.
Being straight about getting them onto your phone
WhatsApp has no button that imports a zip of stickers. That is a limitation of WhatsApp, not of these files: it requires packs to be delivered by an app, which is the entire reason third-party sticker apps exist.
So use any of them — Sticker Maker, Sticker.ly and others all accept a folder of images. Every file here is already 512 × 512 and inside the size limit, which means none of them will be rejected at the point of import, and that is the part those apps do not do for you.
The zip also contains contents.json in the format WhatsApp's own sample app reads, with the tray icon and your pack name and author, so tools that understand that format pick the pack up directly.
What is not here
Animated stickers. They have a different budget — 500 KB, frames of at least 8 milliseconds, ten seconds of animation at most — and a pack cannot mix animated and static ones. It is a separate problem, and a half-done version of it would produce packs that fail to import.
Common questions
Why did WhatsApp reject my sticker?
Almost always the size or the dimensions. It has to be exactly 512×512 WebP and no more than 100 KB, and WhatsApp does not tell you which sticker failed. Everything here is inside those limits before you download it.
Can I import the zip into WhatsApp directly?
No — WhatsApp has no import button for a zip, and requires packs to come from an app. Use any sticker-maker app to add the folder; these files are already the right size and format so none will be rejected.
How many stickers do I need?
Between 3 and 30 for a pack. Fewer than three is not a valid pack, so you are told rather than handed a zip that will not import. You can turn off pack mode to get the files on their own.
Do I need the white outline?
WhatsApp recommends it and it is worth having. A sticker sits on the recipient\u2019s wallpaper, and a dark subject vanishes against a dark one — the outline is what keeps it readable.
Will it remove the background for me?
Yes, using the same model as the background remover. Turn it off if your images are already transparent PNGs.
What about animated stickers?
Not yet. They have a different size budget and frame-timing rules, and a pack cannot mix animated with static — a half-done version would produce packs that fail to import.
Why is my photo sticker lower quality than my drawing?
Because a detailed photograph has to be compressed much harder to fit 100 KB. Flat artwork often fits losslessly. Images with more transparent area compress better.