New Stickers Disappear Immediately (iOS 18 Messages App)

Backup your phone. Factory reset it. Sign in to iCloud and restore using the iCloud backup. Fixed the issue for me. I moved from my 15 Pro to a 16 Pro and I think the problem stemmed from doing the Quick Start option aka when I transferred stuff by setting my old phone next to my new one. But yeah, resetting my phone and restoring from the iCloud backup fixed the problem for me. All my stickers are back.

Same issue on a 15 Pro to 16 Pro upgrade. I read elsewhere that it seems to be a buggy pre-release version of iOS 18 that shipped with the first batches of iPhone 16s. Indeed, I did receive a prompt a couple days after getting my new phone to 'upgrade' to iOS 18 despite settings already showing I was using iOS 18. So, seems likely it did have some sort of pre-release version installed on delivery.

Apple Support suggested I do a full restore from iCloud. I told them 'no way' for a couple of stickers. I've got 400GB of data on there and an iCloud restore would take hours. I suspect we'll just have to wait for a bug fix.

Well. Did a cloud backup, after which I reset the phone, and restored from same backup.

This and few other minor issues are gone, everything’s working now.

Couple of hours nuisance, mostly because waiting for everything to download.

All I had to do again, was adding cards to Apple Pay. Even watch was like nothing ever happened.

So, just do this.

Everyone in this thread, please submit a bug report for broken/blank/un-creatable stickers here:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

The more people report this, the more attention it will get and will likely be fixed in an upcoming update.

This is not an isolated issue since we're all experiencing it.

I fixed this on my IOS18 iPhone this morning! I noticed yesterday that all my stickers were gone, and I was unable to make or create new stickers from my photos. This morning, I turned off a setting In keyboard that said send stickers from emoji keyboard. All of a sudden, all my stickers came back and I was able to save stickers successfully again! Good luck out there!

FWIW, I caved today and took the nuclear route (method 1) … I erased the phone, set up as new, tested stickers (it worked), erased again, restored from iCloud backup. That fixed the issue.

Honestly, it was nowhere near as painful or time-consuming, as I had feared. Most apps logged me in again without any issues. A few financial apps required a separate login, but nothing traumatic.

Also FWIW, the following did not work: Creating an encrypted backup on my Mac, restoring to factory settings, using the Mac, and backing up from the encrypted back up on the Mac. That process was extremely time consuming. It took way over two hours and failed to fix the issue.

At this point, although I was skeptical and fearful, I recommend method one.

I can confirm that backing up to iCloud, erasing all content, setting up as new, erasing again and then restoring from iCloud backup fixed it for me. It’s a pain but it works. 

Alternatively, iOS 18.2 will be released on 12/9 and possibly it might fix it. 

This fixed it!

Go to settings, general, keyboard.

Scroll down to the bottom, toggle stickers (emoji) off.

Restart your phone.

Viola. All stickers back.

Go to above settings and toggle the switch back on as you like.

Thank you to Apple in the US and Customer Support for all your help. Software 18.2 has solved stickers issue for me. I am glad stickers are back and the bloom feature is great as well. 😃.

I hope anyone else who has issues re stickers reports this through Analytics and Improvements as I was advised to do. I agree with comments on here, the more info passed to Apple on devices affected the more this issue can be fixed. 🤞

Issue was finally fixed for me after downloading 18.3 a few minutes ago. At first when went to messages and chose to add sticker or said I didn’t have any, but when created a new one it saved and didn’t delete. Then when went to my photos and created another one, when it saved it showed all my old stickers back. When went back to messages and tried to add a sticker again, this time all my old stickers were there as well as new ones just created.

I ended up fixing this issue. I had to go into my iCloud files on my phone and delete stickers. Then go into backups and delete my old iPhone 12 backup. Manually backup my new 16 pro max then factory reset and use the newest backup and now I can create stickers now. My guess is it’s something wrong when going from an older phone to these new ones?

I upgraded from a 12 Pro Max to a 16 Pro Max, and my stickers were gone and same issue with disappearing after trying to add new ones. New ios18.1 update did not fix the issue. I just tried the reboot and restore from icloud and everything came back. It’s an annoying fix, but a fix nonetheless, if you do want to use the stickers function.

I reset my iphone. I have the 16 so I erased without erasing eSIM. Took a minute but happy problem is corrected.