Eeps

I updated my iPhone last night to iOS 17, which is fine. I would have had to do it eventually after it rolled out and I saw all the articles about it. The only problem is, I was tooling around with some of the "features" and found a Photos gift that isn't so fun. 

Apparently, "add to stickers" is new enough it came out with an update in iOS 16, but I never noticed it. It might have been in one of the 16.x versions. I just didn't have a need for creating personalized stickers from my photos on my phone. 

Well, now we have a problem as I can't find a way to ask the internet how to delete an accidentally created sticker. 

There are plenty of instructions on how to create one, but no where does any of the research I've done, say how to delete / erase the sticker. 

I think it's now permanently part of my phone. 

Okay, so let me actually explain what's happening.

When you take a photo on your iPhone (I think this works for iPad as well), if you long hold on an image, a white line moves around a shape (usually the main item) and it "cuts" that shape out so then you a few options will pop up - "copy", "add to sticker", and something else (I forget what). 

From that point, if you copy the new item, you can paste it in Messages or anywhere else that you want (email, etc/ Places where you can paste stuff). If you select "add to stickers", a copy of that image is created somewhere on your phone. 

I don't know where it goes and since you can't root the phone / see other internal folders besides the DCIM on a computer, I can't go in and delete the photo. 

So where ever it is, it seems permanently there. 

In order to see the sticker, you have to be in iMessages (or a program where you have to use the keyboard). The option to get into emojis on the keyboard, has the option for the stickers you create. From there, you can select the image you want to use / add to a text, and it can get placed inline with what you write. It looks like it's almost like you've selected a photo to share with people. I think I read there's an option to place the sticker over someone else's text and they'd see it, but I didn't test that theory out. I was too concerned with how to delete the image. 

I'm still concerned with how to delete the image. Like I said, the research I've done so far, says there's no way to get rid of the photo. 

I've submitted two different pieces of feedback on the Apple website, asking them to have an option to delete personalized stickers. I hope they fix this, but I'm doubtful. This feature is not a game changer if you don't know what you're doing or want to be able to get rid of items you've created. 

Yes, "the internet is forever" and "your tech owns you", but there still needs to be a way to erase / move / whatever personalized stuff. What if you have kids and gave your kid the phone to play with, and they are of the age where they might not be able to read? They could be looking at photos and somehow make a sticker of something you don't want. Then what? 

Trust me, I've gotten toddler texts from friends kids before - I've sent someone a message and I get back a string of nonsense, only to be told either a few minutes later (because the parent stopped hearing sounds from the phone) or a few hours later "sorry; [kid] was playing a game and I didn't know they had opened the text message and replied". If the kid was wrapped up in playing something, of course the text bubble will be hit and someone will get a response accidentally. So it's very plausible something similar can happen with stickers. 

This is definitely when #techfail and #humanfail comes into places. When you've got everything in the world telling you how to do things, but none of it tells you how to get rid of it. Seems like they don't want you do. One of the articles I read from Apple says the new images you create stay with you on all your devices, so you can use it on your Mac, your iPad, your phone. It is attached to your user ID, so it goes everywhere you do. 

If it is attached to your ID and can be transferred to each device, there has to be a way to delete it as well. Give an option in iCloud if you don't have a Mac (or iTunes if you're still going that route, since a few things still rely on it) or give the option on the phone or iPad itself to delete things. 

It's just like the two ringtones I created back in 2017. I have an alarm tone made out of Francesco Renga's "Angelo" (track 14 from the Camere Con Vista album) and a ringtone made of out a Jan A. P. Kaczmarek song from the movie Aimee & Jaguar (the song is listed as "First Memories", but other sites list it as "Memories of Better Times" or "Aimee & Jaguar Main Theme". The soundtrack doesn't seem to be readily available except on auction sites. Totally glad I bought the CD on Amazon when I did, if it's no longer available for reputable (buy as new) purchase. 

But... both tones are now permanently attached to my user ID and they don't show up in iTunes on my computer anymore. They only show up in my phone as ringtones, so I can't even delete them from my account. I'd like to swap them out with something else, but for some reason, a glitch happened with owning my devices and I've been stuck with old tones for 6 years. Don't get me wrong - I don't hate the songs, but I'd like to be able to get them off my phone and out of my account. The fact Apple seems to be treating them like stock music is upsetting. 

Yes, I've tried to re-upload the snippets to iTunes and sync my device (like some instructions say), but it didn't work. There's a disconnect somewhere and I don't know what it is. 

All the more reason Android might be better than Apple, due to the fact you can plug the phone (or tablet or whatever) into your computer via USB and see all the folders on the device, move things around and do what you need to do. Tay tells me all the time the things he does on his smartphones (he buys them at flea markets for cheap, just to play with them. He doesn't have any cellular service plan; he only uses the phones on Wi-Fi. He's gotten a lot done in a few years, in manipulating things with all the generations of phones he buys). 

At the end of the day, maybe people are right - in some instances, Android rules and Apple drools, but there still needs to be a simple way to fix even the littlest of things. 

Therefore, if you read this and have an Apple, please submit feedback requesting the option to remove stickers created from photos. AND, be careful about making them yourself!

Until all of this gets sorted, go have some coffee and eat your breakfast. It's getting late already. 

Cheers;