Technologies

Make Your Favorite Pet Photo a Cute iPhone Emoji You Can Share Anywhere

Sending snapshots of your pet is one thing. Here’s how to turn them into custom emoji.

Pet owners usually leap at the chance to show pictures of their furry or feathered best friends, but searching for the right photo when I’m texting someone can be an annoyance. Sometimes I just want to reply with a quizzical head turn or a look of unabashed joy with the same ease as sending a smiley face emoji.

Case in point: my dog Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She’s brown and white and loves to go on walks, and I take every opportunity to show her to the world. And with the Live Stickers iPhone feature, I can turn photos of her into emoji and stickers and then text them to everyone I know.

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.

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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 iOS news, here’s my review of iOS 26, how to enable call and text screening in the OS and all the new ringtones on your iPhone. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet

Technologies

ChatGPT Has a New Language Translation Option for You

It’s like Google Translate, but ChatGPT.

OpenAI is putting Google Translate on notice: It now has a dedicated ChatGPT Translate webpage that can convert writing in 50 languages. At first glance it looks like a basic text-to-text translator that resembles Google Translate and other simple language translation tools on the web. But scrolling down the page reveals more about OpenAI’s ambitions for Translate.

You’ll come across a line that mentions adding voice or an image (for instance, a photo of a sign) to get a translation, although the page doesn’t indicate when those capabilities will become available.

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OpenAI’s breakout of Translate comes as its chief competitor, Google, is aggressively deploying AI to support features like live translations using headphones and new language learning tools. In 2024, Google added 110 languages to its translations.

Language translation is a hot field for artificial intelligence in general. At CES 2026 last week, for instance, CNET’s Macy Meyer tried out a phone-sized device and companion headphones that let her carry on a live conversation with a Polish speaker even though she doesn’t speak Polish herself.

The skills that ChatGPT Translate currently provides are things you can already do in the chatbot itself. In fact, once you translate text on the webpage, ChatGPT offers a set of sample prompts as one-click buttons for what you can do with that text, such as «translate this and make it sound more fluent» or «translate this as if you’re explaining it to a child.»

Selecting one of those prompts takes you to a ChatGPT conversation where options like image uploads are readily available.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Technologies

Don’t Miss the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 While It’s $400 Off

A Galaxy Z Fold 7 is $50 cheaper on Amazon than at Samsung right now.

Who knew that foldable phones would be so popular again? If you’re looking for a foldable iPhone, you’re gonna need to wait until later this year. If you’re on the hunt for the best foldable phone you can get your hands on right now, you need to take a look at the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Normally $2,000, right now at both Amazon and Samsung, you can get a decent amount off that hefty price tag.

Amazon is dropping the silver version of Samsung’s foldable phone to $1,600. That’s an impressive $400 discount. If you prefer to shop at Samsung directly, you’ll end up paying $50 more as all colors of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 are down to $1,650. Neither of these are record-low prices, but Amazon is close enough at just $43 more.

Samsung’s unique foldable phones had an awkward adolescence, but after getting her hands on the new lineup, CNET reviewer Abrar Al-Heet confirms that the latest Z Fold 7 «just feels right.» For one, it’s incredibly sleek at just 8.9mm thick when closed or 4.2mm thick when open, which is so thin you may even forget that it’s foldable.

Despite weighing just 215 grams, this foldable features some serious hardware. It has a 6.5-inch cover screen and an 8-inch interior display with a fluid 120Hz refresh rate. It’s equipped with a cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and 12GB of RAM to support tons of helpful AI features and functions, and comes with Android 16 and Samsung One UI 8 right out of the box.

The camera system is also pretty impressive, boasting a 200-megapixel rear camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide shooting and a 10-megapixel front camera on both the cover and interior screens. Plus, it’s equipped with a 4,400-mAh battery for all-day use.

MOBILE DEALS OF THE WEEK

iPhone 17 Pro on Us With Any Condition Trade-in and Qualifying Plan
Google Pixel 10 Pro 128GB Unlocked Phone (Obsidian):

$749 (save $250)
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G 128GB Unlocked Phone (Awesome Black):

$298 (save $102)
Motorola Edge 256GB Unlocked Phone (2024 Model, Midnight Blue):

$241 (save $310)
Google Pixel 9 128GB Unlocked Phone (Obsidian):

$499 (save $300)

Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.

Why this deal matters

With an unbelievably sleek design and cutting-edge hardware, the impressive Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is our favorite foldable phone on the market. But it also comes with a staggering $2,000 price tag, and if you’re hoping to get your hands on one, this $400 discount is a way to save and help cushion the blow of its considerable cost. Just be sure to get your order in soon, as we doubt this deal will remain live for long.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Jan. 15, #949

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Jan. 15, #949

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

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle has a fun purple category that expects you to find two words hidden in four separate clue words. It’s tricky, but intriguing. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: For planting things.

Green group hint: Not going anywhere.

Blue group hint: Little pieces of something.

Purple group hint: Combine two names.