Quick answer
Third-party sticker packs are not stored inside a WhatsApp backup — they are provided by the sticker apps installed on the phone. Restoring a backup on a new device therefore brings your chats but not your packs. Reinstall the sticker app and re-add each pack, and the stickers already sent in old chats keep working.
Get the Sticko app
Why the packs did not come across
A third-party sticker pack is not a file that lives inside WhatsApp. It is supplied by the app that imported it: WhatsApp records that the pack exists and where it came from, and reads the images from that app. Remove the app, or move to a phone that does not have it, and the pack has no source to read from.
That is why the symptom is so consistent — chats, media and settings all restore correctly, and only the sticker tray comes back looking empty.
What a restore does and does not bring back
| Item | Restored? |
|---|---|
| Chats and message history | Yes |
| Stickers already sent or received in chats | Yes — they are part of the conversation |
| Favourited stickers | Usually, once the source pack is reinstalled |
| Third-party sticker packs in your tray | No — the sticker app must be reinstalled |
| Packs from an app you no longer have | No — and not recoverable from the backup |
Getting your packs back
- Install the sticker app you used before on the new phone.
- Open it and sign in if it had an account.
- Re-add each pack with Add to WhatsApp, exactly as the first time.
- Open a chat and check the sticker tray. The packs appear in the order you re-added them.
If you cannot remember which packs you had, scroll an old chat. Every sticker you sent is still there, and tapping one shows which pack it belongs to.
Moving between Android and iPhone
Switching platform makes this more visible, because the sticker app itself has to be installed from the other store. The packs are the same, but the app is a different build, so nothing carries over automatically. Re-adding is the only route.
Avoiding it next time
- Keep the sticker app installed rather than removing it after adding a pack — removing it takes the packs with it.
- Note the packs you rely on, or favourite one sticker from each.
- Expect to re-add packs on any new phone; there is no export format for third-party packs.
It is worth being clear about why no export exists. A pack is not a single file that WhatsApp owns — it is a set of WebP images plus a small manifest, served to WhatsApp by the app that imported them. There is no container to hand to another device, and no WhatsApp-side copy to restore from. Every sticker app therefore rebuilds the packs from its own library rather than from your backup, which is why signing back into the same sticker app is the fastest route rather than anything inside WhatsApp itself.
When the packs are there but the stickers are blank
A different symptom with the same root cause: the pack names appear in the tray but the thumbnails are empty or grey. That usually means the sticker app was restored by the phone-transfer tool without its downloaded content, so WhatsApp can see the pack registration but not the images behind it.
- Open the sticker app and let it finish downloading its library.
- Remove the affected pack from WhatsApp.
- Add it again from the app.
- Force-close WhatsApp once and reopen it so the tray rebuilds.
If a single sticker in an otherwise healthy pack is blank, that is a pack problem rather than a restore problem — report it from the pack page so the publisher's file can be re-encoded.
Get the Sticko app
WhatsApp only accepts sticker packs from an installed app, so the last step always happens outside the browser. Sticko is free on Android and iPhone, and adds any pack to WhatsApp in a couple of taps.
