How to make Twitch emotes: sizes, requirements and upload

Step by step

1. 01

   Check whether you can upload emotes before Affiliate

   Twitch Help: About Monetization on Twitch ↗

   Everyone says you need Affiliate before you get emotes. That's out of date. Twitch's help now says any streamer can get most monetization tools by accepting the Monetized Streamer Agreement (MSA) and finishing onboarding. Click your profile picture, open the Creator Dashboard and go to Monetization, Setup. Step 1 gives you Channel Points, subs, Bits, emotes and badges. If you're over 13 but under 18, a parent or legal guardian accepts the agreement for you. Two catches: before Affiliate, your sub emotes can't be used outside your own channel, and you don't get instant upload. You also can't cash out yet. Until Affiliate, your balance only works for purchases on Twitch.

   What you should see: Once Step 1 is submitted, your Creator Dashboard shows new tabs under Monetization, including Subscriptions.

2. 02

   Count your slots and sub points

   Twitch Help: Emote Slots ↗

   Every active emote takes a slot, and extra slots come from sub points. A Tier 1 sub is worth 1 point, Tier 2 is 2 and Tier 3 is 6. Affiliates start with 5 emote slots and can reach 20, plus 5 slots just for animated emotes that also go up to 20. Partners can reach 60. Once you hit a milestone the slot is yours for good, even if your sub count drops later. Heads up: the Spanish translation of this page still lists lower caps, so trust what your own dashboard shows.

   What you should see: Your dashboard shows three numbers: current subscribers, current sub points, and the points you need for the next slot.

3. 03

   Build the emote for free in your browser

   Nicole Rojas | YouTube | 1:01 ↗

   You need the file before you upload anything, and you don't need Photoshop. In her video (in Spanish), Nicole crops her photo square, removes the background with remove.bg, resizes it to 112 by 112 pixels as a PNG, and animates it with MakeEmoji or EmoteJam. Her tip for picking an image: a gesture, a wave, a disgusted face, a scared face. At that size a sign with words is unreadable, and she learned that one the hard way. If you don't have Twitch emotes yet, the same video shows how to upload to BetterTTV, a browser extension. The full walkthrough is in How to make animated Twitch emotes without Affiliate.

   What you should see: You have a square 112 by 112 PNG with a transparent background, and the expression still reads at real size.

4. 04

   Get the PNG into Twitch's format

   Twitch Help: Emote Formatting & Instant Emote Upload Requirements ↗

   Twitch has strict format requirements. The image has to be a .png and square, same width and height. With auto-resize you need one image between 112 x 112 and 4096 x 4096 pixels. For manual upload you need three: 28 x 28, 56 x 56 and 112 x 112. The file can't go over 1 MB and the background must be fully transparent. View it at 100% before you upload, to make sure the lines are sharp and any letters are easy to read.

   What you should see: The file's properties show a PNG with equal width and height, under 1 MB.

5. 05

   Upload it from Viewer Rewards

   Twitch Help: Subscriber Emote Guide ↗

   Open your dashboard and, in the left sidebar, click Viewer Rewards, then Emotes, then Subscriber Emotes. No emote prefix yet? You'll have to set one first. Click the + button under the tier you want and pick your file. In Emote Code, type a name such as Love, and the full code becomes your prefix plus that name. Auto-resize takes one image under 1 MB and makes the other sizes for you. Turn it off and you upload the three sizes yourself, each under 100KB. Then click Upload Emote.

   What you should see: The emote shows up in its slot marked Pending Approval, with a watch icon.

6. 06

   Animated? Watch the frame count and the flashing

   Twitch Help: Animated Emotes ↗

   Animated emotes play by their own rules. You upload a square GIF: one between 112 x 112 and 4096 x 4096 pixels with auto-resize, or three GIFs at 28, 56 and 112 in manual mode. The cap is 1MB for auto-resize and 512KB per file in manual. No more than 60 frames, and it can't flash or flicker more than 3 times in one second. The thumbnail defaults to the first frame unless you upload a custom one. No GIF? Easy Animate adds motion to a PNG you already have: pick Shake, Rave, Roll, Spin, Slide In or Slide Out from Choose Animation. Android shows them animated across the app, and Twitch says it's still working on iOS.

   What you should see: When you pick a template in Choose Animation, the preview shows your emote moving.

7. 07

   Add follower emotes for new viewers

   Twitch Help: Follower Emotes ↗

   Follower emotes are a free tier that viewers get just by following you. Affiliates and Partners can upload them, up to five. Go to Viewer Rewards, Emotes, and from your Library open Slot Assignment and choose Follower. You can upload new ones, move them from another tier or use Twitch's default emotes. One catch: followers who don't subscribe can only use them in your channel. Subscribers can use them anywhere on Twitch.

   What you should see: The Emotes page shows a Follower tier with the emotes you assigned, and your chat shows a callout about follower emotes.

8. 08

   Run it past the content rules first

   Twitch Safety Center: Emote Guidelines ↗

   Most emotes work in any channel on Twitch, so the art and the name both have to suit everyone. Hateful content, harassment, graphic violence, sexual content, nudity, drugs, vulgarity and politics are out. So are single letters like an L or a W, and copies of Twitch's global emotes. Something that's fine as a still image can get denied once it moves. The big one for game fans: no characters from games, movies or TV, no other people's art, no assets from other channels and no celebrity faces without permission. The ban is on other people's likeness.

   What you should see: You check your design against the Emote Guidelines list and it doesn't fall into any banned category.

9. 09

   Wait for review, or earn instant upload

   Twitch Help: Emote Formatting & Instant Emote Upload Requirements ↗

   Until you have instant upload, a person at Twitch reviews each emote. Affiliates earn it after streaming at least 60 unique days over a rolling year, and days streamed before Affiliate don't count. Partners get it 60 days after joining. A warning or a suspension takes it away. If an emote gets rejected, you get an email with the general reason. You can change the design and resubmit, but don't hammer the resubmit button, because Twitch can pull instant upload or other privileges for abuse. And that's it: approved emote, a chat that looks like yours.

   What you should see: Once Twitch approves the emote, the pending label disappears and you can type it in your chat with your prefix.