Technologies

You Can Turn Your Pet Pictures Into Emoji on Your iPhone. Here’s How

Your pets deserve their own emoji, on top of all the belly rubs and scritches they want.

I love my dog, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She’s brown and white and precious, and I take every opportunity to show her to the world. With an iPhone feature called Live Stickers, I can turn photos of her into emoji and stickers, and then text them to others.

Apple introduced Live Stickers in iOS 17 as an evolution of the tap-and-lift feature from iOS 16, which lets you cut out subjects from photos and Live Photos. Now, by saving those cutouts as emoji and stickers of pets, family and friends, you can send endless cuteness to others.

Here’s how to transform your photos into emoji and stickers to send in Messages and other apps.

How to make Live Stickers and emoji from pictures

1. Open your Photos app.
2. Tap the photo you want to turn into an emoji or sticker.
3. Tap and hold the item in the photo you want to turn into an emoji or sticker until you see the white outline.
4. Tap Add Sticker.

Your iPhone will then add the Live Sticker to your Stickers drawer and appear in your emoji keyboard. If you tap the new sticker, you’ll be given the options to Rearrange, Add Effect or Delete it. Tapping Add Effect will let you add an effect to your sticker, like a white outline, to make it look even more like a sticker.

The next time you go into Messages, you can use your new sticker as an emoji by tapping the emoji keyboard in the bottom-left corner of your screen, tapping the folded-over circle and tapping the emoji you want to use.

According to Apple, you can use your new Live Sticker anywhere you can access emoji. I tried to use my Live Stickers on the messaging app Slack, but they wouldn’t appear in the app. I also couldn’t access my Live Stickers in some third-party apps, like TikTok, so you might run into some issues when using your Live Stickers outside of Apple apps and devices.

For more on iOS, here are my first impressions of the iOS 26 beta, how to enable call screening in the beta and all the other new features Apple said that update will bring to your device later this year.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Jan. 23

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 23.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Hope you’re familiar with a certain blond actor (8-Across)! Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Attach, as one plant to another
Answer: GRAFT

6A clue: Email button with a backward-facing arrow
Answer: REPLY

7A clue: Make very excited
Answer: AMPUP

8A clue: Two-time Best Actor nominee Nick
Answer: NOLTE

9A clue: Total dork
Answer: DWEEB

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Word that can precede piano, total or staircase
Answer: GRAND

2D clue: Cut again, as a lawn
Answer: REMOW

3D clue: Company whose logo has a bite taken out of it
Answer: APPLE

4D clue: Champagne glass
Answer: FLUTE

5D clue: Laid-back kind of personality
Answer: TYPEB

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Technologies

‘Is Microsoft Down?’ Outlook and Teams Go Dark in Widespread Outage

It’s not just you: Numerous Microsoft services weren’t working most of Thursday, and the outage is continuing.

Thursday has been a tough work day for many — or maybe, a great one, depending on how eager you are to access work-related programs. Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 are experiencing a significant outage that’s still going on as of early evening, Pacific time. Microsoft hasn’t announced an expected time when everything will be back up and running.

You can follow the official Microsoft 365 Status account on the social-media platform X, which has been regularly posting updates about the outage.

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The first post there, from 11:37 a.m. PT, said that the company was «investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364.»

The admin center is the dashboard for IT admins managing Microsoft 365 services.

You can also monitor Microsoft’s Service Health Status page. That page is noting that «users may be seeing degraded service functionality or be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.»

A representative for Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Ring’s Latest Feature Lets You Verify Shared Security Videos

With so many fake videos out there, the home-security company is adding a level of protection.

Popular home security brand Ring announced that videos shared from its devices can now be verified, so customers know they’re watching an authentic, unaltered video. Ring says the new verification process is similar to a security seal on a package or medicine bottle, indicating that no one has tampered with it.

The new feature is available starting Thursday, and it doesn’t matter which Ring device recorded the video. All videos downloaded directly from the Ring app are automatically verified and include a security seal for authenticity.

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When someone sends you a Ring video, you can now visit Ring’s verification page, paste the video link, and determine immediately whether the video is verified. The website doesn’t send your video anywhere. It stays locally on your device, and all verification checks happen within your browser. The verification website only accepts MP4 files, the format Ring videos are saved.

Videos downloaded before December 2025 or edited videos cannot be verified. Ring says that even minor adjustments, such as shaving a couple of seconds off the beginning or end of a video, or even adjusting brightness levels, will render it unverifiable.