3 Easy Ways to Add Your Own GIF Stickers on Instagram Stories

Want to add your GIF Stickers on Instagram Stories? In this post I share 3 easy ways to create your own GIF Stickers and share them on your posts (updated in 2026!)

BY DONNA MORITZ | UPDATED FEBRUARY 2026

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GIFs and GIF Stickers can be lots of fun (and savvy branding) for your brand! But how do you post them on Instagram? This post gets a lot of searches every month, seeking those answers. So we've done a complete revamp with all the current ways to add your own GIF Stickers to Instagram Stories.

If you've been using Instagram for a while now you would have met GIF Stickers. They're the fun GIF images, videos or illustrations that you can use as overlays to place over your Instagram Stories – made possible by their transparent background. Posting GIFs on Instagram never gets old.

They let you add personality and interest to your posts, making them more engaging! And you've all been loving this post so much we updated it with new ways to add GIF stickers so you can get the most up to date information!

Let's dive into how you can use personalised animated GIF Stickers on Instagram.. and a few tips for static Stickers too! 

Types of GIF Stickers on Instagram

Before you create your own stickers, be aware of what Instagram offers in the way of stickers. The quickest way to find GIF Stickers (or any type of stickers) on Instagram is to search for them via the Sticker menu.

 Choose the Sticker Menu Button – The sticker icon looks like this:

It's the smiling square face icon at the top of your screen in Stories: 

The Sticker button will open up an entire menu of interactive elements and tools that allow your followers to interact with your content.

You can enhance engagement, personalize content, create polls and add location tags to name just a few. Here are a few of the most popular stickers. As you can see on the image below, there are many to choose from:

There are many stickers and tools to choose from. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Location Sticker – Search for a nearby location or add one at the top. Then anyone who sees your story can tap on the sticker and view the page for that location to see more content posted about it.
2. Mention Sticker (to tag someone) – add the username of anyone you wish to mention in your story. Viewers can then tap to go to their profile.
3. Hashtag Sticker – enter the hashtag you wish to feature and anyone viewing your story can click the hashtag to view the page for that hashtag and all content associated with it.
4. Add Yours – This allows you to write a promopt for others to then share their own stories or reels about a topic that you want – or tap “random” at the bottom for suggested prompts – then tap “done” in the top right.
5. Poll Sticker & Emoji Slider – Write your question and then customize the answers. Anyone who sees your story can tap an option in the pole or slide the slider to respond with an emoji reaction. Once posted, people can vote and see the results of the voting in real time. You can then swipe up on your story or reel to see how many votes each option received and how viewers voted. Here's a post I wrote all about using Poll Stickers. It walks you through how to use them for engagement.
6. Question – in stories you can write a question and customise the answers. You can let people respond with text or a song. Anyone who sees your story can tap the sticker to send a response and you can swipe up to see who responded. You can also tap a response from any viewer to share it to your story (only their response is shown, not their username or photo).
7. Cutouts (magic happens here – keep reading below!) – this allows you to create your own stickers on Instagram by creating cutouts from your photos in the camera roll. Or from eligible images you see on Instagram.
8. Donation – this allows you to select a charity and raise money for a fundraiser.
9. Countdown/Clock Sticker – this allows you to enter a countdown timer on your Story. Just enter a name and set the date and time for when you want your countdown to end. You can change the color with the color picker.
10. Music – select a song or search for one at the top. If lyrics for the song you choose are available, you can choose different fonts and designs to showcase them. You can also edit which part of the song you wish to play. Anyone who sees your story can tap the lyrics to learn more about the song/artist you've featured.
11. GIF – Select a trending GIF or search for one at the top in the search bar. All of Giphy is at your fingertips as with Giphy Search you can access 1000's of GIF Stickers via Instagram's GIF search function.

Instagram is always adding new sticker options. so just bear in mind that the menu items you see here might differ when you open the sticker menu, depending on whether Instagram has added or removed sticker types.

Want to check the lastest stickers? Just open the sticker button and take a look at the options! The best way to learn more about them is to explore using them in your stories. 

Why would you add your own Stickers?

Most people don't even realize that you can add your own GIF Stickers or Stickers to Instagram (or as part of Instagram's features). But you can!

The easy route to add stickers to your story is of course to search for GIF Stickers via the Giphy menu as per this example. Below, I've clicked on the GIF icon in the sticker menu, then proceeded to search for “popcorn” stickers:

 

Most of these GIF Stickers are made by other brands – or by Instagram themselves – and that's a totally valid option, especially if you don't have much time. There's a huge library of stickers to choose from with more being added daily.

But if you DO have time to create your own stickers, they can be wonderful for branding and helping your followers get to know you. We've shared 3 easy ways to add your own custom stickers to Instagram Stories below – including a new way to create GIF stickers right inside Instagram!

When you add your own GIF Stickers you can be a little more strategic about your branding and content. By making the stickers your own, with your own personality, it adds value to your community. They can then use them in their content!

One example of a brand that does this well is Target. They're always adding new, engaging Stickers that their fans and customers love to use to express their fandom on Instagram Stories:

So let's jump in and take a look at how you can create and share your own GIF Stickers on Instagram.

3 Ways to Create and Add Your Own GIF Stickers on Instagram Stories

Let's start with the simplest method that involves the least amount of  “work” to add your own Stickers on Instagram Stories. We'll start with static stickers then we'll move to the animated stickers that involve a little more work but also gives you the most impact.

You're not limited to just one option. You can use all 3 in your marketing! And the first two are super easy to do!

Note: all of these methods involve adding Stickers with transparent backgrounds or PNG format images or animations. So make sure when you create your Stickers that you have them in this format. As you will see below, the tools for this make this process very easy. Adding stickers has come a long way in the past few years!

In short, there should be some transparent “white space” around your actual image or GIF in transparent format.

Here are the 3 methods:

1. Add Stickers from Your Camera Roll

This is simply the process of adding any static or video sticker from your camera roll to Instagram.  Here's how it works on my iOS smartphone using a static sticker:

(a) Add a static or Image Sticker

1. Open up your Instagram Story in Instagram and prepare to add a Sticker. I took this image of my dog and removed the background by pressing and holding the image in my Camera Roll to remove background. You can also remove the background in Canva.

2.  Make sure you've saved your Sticker (image or GIF Sticker with transparent background) to your Camera Roll. You can do this from Dropbox, Google Docs or via Email. In this case I'm using a sticker image of my dog. But you can also add GIF or video stickers too.

3. In stories, you can add your sticker from the bottom left camera roll icon. click the icon to open up the photo gallery.

4. A screen will pop up with options for you to choose any image or in this case, the dog Sticker. Select it and Instagram will add it to your story.

5. Voila! Now my dog is in the story, ready to add other text, music or stickers!

That's it! A few simple steps and you've added your own custom sticker from outside of Instagram Stories into your Story.

(b) Add a GIF Sticker from your phone

Previously it was possible to save a GIF to your phone gallery and then choose the SHARE button then > COPY Photo and then you could paste that photo (or GIF) into your Story by going to your Story and clicking Paste. However in the recent year, this has not been working so we have removed this sequence from this tutorial. 

The alternative now, is to use the Cutout feature in Instagram (to create a GIF sticker and add it) or to go next-level and save your GIFs to a Giphy account, like I share below.

2. Create a Sticker in Instagram using the Cutout feature

Did you know you can create a sticker on Instagram using the Cutout feature in Stickers?

Cutouts help you to add custom stickers from your own photos in your camera roll, or from eligible images that you can see on Instagram. Here's how it works:

(a) Create your custom sticker with cutouts!

1. Tap the sticker icon at the top of the page in Stories =>  
2. Tap Cutouts.
3. Select your photo or video with a clear subject.
4. A sticker will be automatically generated from the photo or video. If it doesn't render as you'd like you can also tap “Select Manually” in the bottom left to select the object that you want to use for your sticker. Note that you can only pick one object at a time for the sticker.
5. Then simply create your reel or story – or if you want to, you can also save your sticker and use it later.
6. To access your stickers later, tap  Stickers and select the sticker you wnat to add to add it to your reel or story in Instagram. Stickers are always saved at the top of your sticker tray so you can use them again.

Guess what? This also works with custom GIFs that are animated. Check out this tutorial for how it works:

(b) Create a custom sticker from someone else's post using cutouts.

If someone shares a story from a public account and has enabled permissions for you to create a sticker from their account, then you have further options! This enables you to create a sticker from a photo on an Instagram posted by a person who has enabled these settings:

1. Go to the photo that you want to create a sticker from. 
2. Tap   in the top right of the post. 
3. Tap Create a cutout sticker.
4. Now you can do the same as you would in the example above. 

Important: Note that as per above, you can only do this from an account where this feature has been enabled. Also if you create a sticker with cutouts from someone elses's post and that post has been deleted, your content using that sticker will also be deleted. 

If you want to turn off the settings in your own account that allow this, then go to Account settings to turn this off or tap in the top right of individual posts to change your settings. 

(c) Delete stickers you've created with cutouts. 

Want to delete stickers you've created with cutouts?

1. Create a new story or reel on Instagram.
2. Then tap  Stickers. 
3. In Your Stickers section, tap and hold on any sticker that you've created. 
4. Tap Delete. 

Note that any reels that you've created with that sticker will also be deleted. 

Now it's time to look at the Holy Grail for adding Stickers to your Instagram Account: A branded Giphy Channel.

 

3.  Add Stickers from Giphy

As we've outlined above, you can add stickers from Giphy in a few clicks via the GIF This takes a couple of extra steps but I'm building you up to #3 where you can really do some cool stuff with GIF Stickers for your brand.

In this third option, you're going to set up a Giphy Channel to store and share your GIFs and GIF Stickers.

Honestly, I think this is a great move, and I highly recommend you do it, even if you are not ready for Step 3 (applying for a Branded Giphy Channel) yet.

Why? Because it allows you to:

• Host your GIFs and GIF Stickers in a central place.
• Share the links to your GIFs and GIF Stickers with your audience to use on social media.
• Allows you to easily share your GIFs by links as well.
• It's the first step in helping others discover your GIFs for your brand – whether they be regular GIFs or GIF Stickers.

Then, when you're ready, you can apply for a Branded GIF Channel, but for now let's get you started with a regular GIF Channel.

(a) Set up a Giphy Channel & Add Stickers from your Channel

Setting up a Giphy Channel is easy. You just simply sign up for a Giphy Account here.

I won't go into the how-to's of creating and uploading GIFs in this post, but suffice to say Giphy has some cool tools to enable you to create GIFs from images or videos and to edit and upload them.

Once your channel is set up, all you have to do is start creating and uploading GIFs (use the tools I suggest below to create them!). Then you can share any of your channel GIFs to Instagram using the following method:

(b) Adding your GIF Sticker to Instagram Stories

Again, the process of adding a GIF Sticker from Giphy has changed. Previously we could open up our Giphy account, find a GIF to share, tap on the sticker and then it would copy and you could paste it to Instagram .

That doesn't quite work anymore. Now you need to do this: 

GIPHY offers a one-click solution to turn any GIF into a perfectly looped 15 second .mp4, that you can upload directly to Instagram.

On the GIPHY mobile app:

1  Find a GIF you want to share. In this case, I'm going to choose “Create something everyday” – a GIF I had made for a large conference I was speaking at. Select the GIF: 

2. Then tap the GIF to copy it as instructed:

3 Choose the Arrow/Paperplane button to open up – then share by clicking the Instagram icon:

 3. Instagram will open and you'll be given the opportunity to share your GIF to your feed, story or reel by pasting it. (you might need to give permission to be able to paste the GIF):

Now you're ready to roll, with your GIF Sticker added and ready for you to finish off your Story!

3. Add Stickers via Search from a Branded Giphy Channel

I have had a Branded Giphy account for a while now and it has many added benefits:

1. Acknowledgement by Giphy that you are a Company, Recording Artist, Brand or Public Figure.
2. The ability to add searchable GIFs to your Giphy account. This means that you – or anyone – can search on your GIFs via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Which is very cool.
3. Tracking of “views” of your GIFs. You get to see basic stats on how your GIFs are being viewed.

I'll get into how you can apply below, but first, here's my channel:

Check out Socially Sorted's Branded GIF Channel

You can check out my Branded Giphy Channel here or click the image below.

At the time of updating this post I have almost 200 million views of my GIF stickers. Partly because they are viewed a lot on Instagram Stories at events where I am a speaker. But once you add stickers they can go viral for a number of reasons.

Like that one time when The Ellen Show used one of my GIF Stickers on their Instagram Story. That one Sticker alone now has over 3 million views. #TrueStory.

I use my brand channel for a range of purposes, including experimenting with reach and to experiment with the potential of GIFs for our agency at Socially Sorted, to provide fun content for my audience to share at events I speak at, and also so that I can advise the brands I speak for and consult with.

You can access them by searching on #sociallysorted via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter search. You'll also see regular GIFs too that you can use in social media engagement.

Adding GIFs from a Giphy Branded Channel

Anyone can simply open up Instagram Stories and search (via the GIF Sticker) for the GIF Sticker that they want. For example, I could search “Excited” and a whole bunch of GIFs open up for selection.

Here's a few ways this works really well:

1.  It means that your audience or anyone random can find your stickers via search (Hello, Team Ellen).  It's Instagram + Giphy, so the potential numbers are mind-boggling.

Let's take a look at the image above for example. Ellen's team usually have their own Sticker overlay for “Swipe Up” but I am presuming that they wanted to post something quickly so searched and selected by Sticker under the search for #SwipeUp.

2. You can also search for your own GIF Stickers and use them in branding. So I can open up Instagram Stories and search for my own GIF Stickers by using the hashtag #SociallySorted – as I have added that hashtag to all of my stickers for search in Giphy.

I can alternatively search on keywords that I know will bring them up, like “Swipe Up” or “Queensland” for my pair of Flip Flops. Yes, they rank for high search terms, because… well… not many people are doing this as yet!

Now I can add my stickers easily to my Instagram Story, in this case a post about getting excited to speak at Social Media Marketing World… and one of my favourite photos of fellow speakers and attendees from previous events!

3. You can also give your audience the search hashtags or particular search terms for them to find your GIF Content in Giphy Search.

For example, if you are “Target” you might tell your Instagram audience to go crazy with their #Target #Valentines Day Stickers. Oh, and look… they show up on search!

Target has perfectly optimized their GIF Selection for Valentine's Day, knowing their fans will love to share the Target love on Instagram.

The Target GIFs are branded, yes, but they are also super fun and some of them will suit any generic post (aka GIF Stickers for “relationship goals”).

It may not always be super branded, but it is super target with an ROI in mind but it is entertaining to their audience. They are giving their Instagram-loving, Target-loving audience another reason to love them. Check out their Brand Channel here.

I could go on about the potential of this, but let's jump in to how you can apply for a branded Giphy Channel:

Applying for a Giphy Branded Channel

Applying for a Giphy Branded Channel takes 3 simple steps:

1. Set up a regular Giphy Channel as I outlined above.
2. Add some GIFs to your channel. I recommend you include a few GIF Stickers too (ie GIFs with transparent backgrounds). Giphy recommends that you add at least 5 GIF stickers to begin with. Choose some that are eye-catching!
3. Apply to become a Giphy Branded Channel. You can apply to be a Brand Channel with this form.

If you are lucky to be accepted you'll get a welcome message, something like this:

Giphy recommends that to be successful with your application you need to:

• ensure that your e-mail address is a company domain, otherwise it will be rejected. They are looking for legitimate applications, naturally.
• provide a functioning company website address (ie social accounts are not going to make the cut and will cause your application to be rejected).

My application was accepted quickly but others have taken longer or even two attempts. Some people have not had any luck at all. How it all works is not entirely clear, so it's hard for me to give definitive advice. Please note that Giphy may change their requirements at any time so we can not guarantee you will get approved.

However, Giphy are providing more and more tips for getting accepted so I would I would follow their recommendations and add a mix of branded and non-branded GIFs that your audience would love to use and share .. and cross your fingers! 

I believe it's worth applying if you already have a Giphy Channel set up. It takes just a few minutes to do the form and apply. Unfortunately it's getting harder to get accepted as more and more people apply, but it's worth a shot! 

Want more GIF Posts?

You can read more about GIFs in these posts:

How to Create Animated GIFs that Stand Out

How to use Cool GIFs in Marketing to WOW Your Audience (Infographic)

Our calendar posts for each month of the year – find them here. 

How to bring Still Images to Life – Social Media Examiner Podcast

Tools for Creating GIFs

If you want some tools for creating GIFs, I use:

EzGif (for editing my GIFs)

Giphy (for hosting and sharing my GIFs)

Canva – my go to for creating visual content. Hot tip: You can download any video format in Canva as a GIF – just choose Download > GIF format when publishing.

Wrapping it Up

While not always connected to direct returns or sales, GIFs and GIF Stickers can be great branding tools for replying and engaging on social media channels.

They can also be fantastic for creating content for your audience to use –  that taps into your brand and helps them to tell your brand story. That's the potential I am excited about.

Over to You

Are you excited about the creative potential of GIFs and GIF Stickers?

Are you creating or sharing GIF Stickers? Let me know in the comments below.