Twitch emotes add a fun flair to your Twitch stream, enticing watchers to follow or subscribe.
Discover how Twitch emotes work, learn how to create your own custom emotes, and explore ways to use them before achieving affiliate status.
Everything you ever needed to know about Twitch emotes is right here.
What Are Twitch Emotes?
The emotes on Twitch are similar to those on your phone and other social media sites. They are fun little illustrations and icons people can post in the Twitch chat.
Viewers use emotes to cheer, laugh, cry, or convey various emotions and reactions.
Twitch has mastered emoticons in ways other websites can only dream of, building an entire subculture with its emoji system. Many emotes become memes within the gaming community, and some have even transcended Twitch, becoming popular memes in mainstream pop culture.
Popular Twitch Emotes
Some of the most popular and widely known Twitch emotes are cutouts of influential streamers/creators’ faces showing some type of reaction.
Kappa is the most popular. It came from a grey-scale photo of the man who created the precursor to Twitch’s chat (in 2007 on Justin.tv, the streaming platform that eventually morphed into Twitch).
The Kappa emoticon is now fully ingrained into Twitch culture and is generally used as an eye roll, sarcastic response, or to spam chats.
LUL is another trendy icon. It stands for “lame uncomfortable laugh” and depicts the late streamer, John Bain, laughing. There were some copyright/trademark issues with its use initially, but the original photographer, Jonathan Tayag, authorized Twitch to use it under the stipulation that it be free for everyone.
LUL now stands proud as one of the most popular global emotes. Unfortunately, Bain passed away after a battle with cancer in 2018 at the age of 33.
The BibleThump emote is one of the most popular global emotes that depicts an illustration rather than a person’s face. It’s generally used to portray sadness, either to commiserate with the streamer or someone in chat or as a meme.
Popular memes, such as the “feels bad man” frog and the “concern doge,” have also found their way onto Twitch as emotes.
Global Emotes vs Channel Emotes
There are two different types of emotes that you will see on Twitch – global emotes and channel emotes.
Global emotes are available for everyone, whereas channel emotes are limited to channel subscribers.
Channel emotes give streamers who’ve reached affiliate or partner status some personalization and control over their stream chats.
How To Get Twitch Emotes
Every streamer and viewer has access to global Twitch emotes. To use one, click the little smiley face icon in the chatbox and choose your emoji, just like other social media and texting apps.
Channel emotes make Twitch stand out from all other social platforms. You must follow or subscribe to a channel to unlock them as a viewer. Each streamer with emotes decides which emojis to offer their followers and each subscriber tier.
You must become a Twitch affiliate or partner to unlock them as a streamer. Once you achieve affiliate status, you can create and upload your own branded emotes.
Making Custom Emotes
Although some streamers make their own custom emotes, many hire a graphic designer to do the work for them.
If you don’t have experience with a photo editor, you might want to hire an artist, as Twitch has technical requirements outlining what is compatible with the platform.
You can find artists on freelance sites like Fivvr, social media, and Twitch itself. Check their portfolio to ensure you like their work, and read the reviews to ensure they aren’t scammers. Pay any artist you work with fairly for their work.
If you want to make your own, follow Twitch’s guidelines.
Technical Requirements for Emotes
The technical requirements for Twitch emotes are fairly straightforward. They must be:
- PNG Format
- Uploaded in three sizes (28 x 28; 56 x 56 and 112 x 112)
- File size less than 25kb
- Transparent background
Technical Requirements to use the Auto-Resizer
Twitch has a new feature that automatically resizes your photos, so you don’t have to upload three versions. To use the auto resizer, your photos must meet the following guidelines:
- Less than 1MB file size
- Must be square
- No animations
- Between 112px by 112px and 4096px by 4096px
When you upload a custom emoticon, you will be prompted to choose a unique code to accompany it, which can have up to 20 alpha-numeric characters.
Twitch’s tools don’t check to ensure the emote looks good once uploaded. Check your icons at full resolution before uploading them to ensure any words are easily readable and all the images are as sharp as you want.
General Requirements for Emotes
Twitch has restrictions and guidelines outside the technical requirements to ensure all emotes are family-friendly and safe for their sites.
Twitch is adamant about keeping its site clean and will reject or remove any emoticon that doesn’t meet its guidelines.
When making custom emotes, make sure that they follow all of Twitch’s community rules. That means they can’t contain any of the following content:
- Hateful –racial/sexist slurs, symbols, stereotypes
- Harassment – Targeted insults, bullying, threatening
- Threats of violence – Threats against others, threats of suicide
- Obscene content – gratuitous depictions of violence, blood, gore, severe injury, death
- Sexual content – sexual acts (sex, masturbation), arousal, gestures, aids, and attire
- Nudity – depictions and imitations of nude torsos, buttocks, genitals, and anuses.
- Illegal drugs – depictions or references to illicit drug use, drugs, and drug paraphernalia.
- Vulgarity – obscene or explicit words, phrases, and gestures
- Glorifying or encouraging violations of Community Guidelines
- Politics – political phrases, symbols, and figures
- Animations – except those supported by Twitch’s Animated emote and Cheermote features
- Flashing/Flickering Effects – flashes/flickers in animated emotes that occur more than three times within a second, including rapidly changing colors
- Individual letters and characters – Unless you are a Twitch Partner and the letters or characters that you use are a key part of your brand
- Twitch Brand Assets – images or content trademarked by Twitch
- Emoticons based on Twitch Global Emoticons – copies of the emoticons already there
- Copyright/trademark infringement – Other people’s art, brands, content, likenesses, etc., without explicit written permission
Twitch will review your custom emotes prior to approval and continues to monitor its site for violations of any of these guidelines. Failure to follow these requirements can lead to the removal of the offending content or a penalty on your account.
In severe cases, Twitch can issue an indefinite account suspension, permanently deleting your entire account, so it’s crucial to follow their guidelines.
How Many Custom Twitch Emotes Can I Have?
Twitch decides how many emotes an affiliate has access to based on sub-points.
All affiliates get immediate access to five emote slots and can unlock up to 20 based on how many subpoints they have. Partners can unlock up to 60 emote slots (but you’d need to earn 10,000 subscriber points to achieve that feat).
Earning subpoints is a little complicated. In general, one subscriber is worth one point, but there are different tiers of subscribers.
Tier 1 subscribers are worth one point, tier 2 subscribers are worth two points, and tier 3 subscribers are worth six points. Thus, you can unlock more custom slots with fewer subscribers if the subscribers are top-tier subscribers.
Twitch also offers animated emote slots with the same requirements as the standard slots. Affiliates and partners can instantly access the first five slots and unlock up to 20 and 60, respectively, with subscriber points.
Can I Get Custom Twitch Emotes Without Being an Affiliate?
So far, we’ve only addressed the custom emote process on the Twitch platform itself. However, you can integrate outside plugins with Twitch that allow you to use emotes without achieving affiliate status. BetterTTV (BTTV) is one of the best plugins offering emoticon functionality.
BTTV offers hundreds of global emotes that aren’t available on Twitch and allows you to upload custom emotes.
The free version of BTTV allows you to upload or share up to 50 emotes. If you want more functionality, you can subscribe to the service for $5 a month (or $50 a year).
Differences Between Twitch Custom Emotes and BTTV Custom Emotes
Even though you can use an extension like BTTV to get custom emotes, they don’t have the same functionality as the Twitch custom emotes.
The advantage of BTTV emotes is that you don’t need to be an affiliate to use them. You can customize your stream with cat emotes all you want before meeting the difficult requirements.
But you also lose the perks.
One of the most significant advantages of Twitch custom emotes is that they give your subscribers and followers something.
Enticing people to follow or subscribe to your channel is crucial to your success as a streamer. Offering them emotes is like giving them a badge of honor for being your fan.
They also get to use those emotes all over Twitch, so your followers can advertise your stream for you.
BTTV doesn’t have the same functionality. Users can only access your BTTV emotes while in your chat. They are free to anyone in your chat, whether they follow, subscribe, or just hang out.
If you haven’t achieved affiliate status yet, you can use BTTV as a stop-gap. You can show off the cool emotes you might have one day and entice people to hang out in your stream. It might be the extra push needed to convince someone to follow you, which will help you become an affiliate faster.
Emotes Help Your Twitch Stream Stand Out
Whether you are an affiliate or not, using custom emotes helps your stream stand out.
They let you showcase your personality, make your stream unique, and lead to increased followership.
Make the most of your stream by uploading great emotes people can’t help but share.