There are many reasons people create avatars on WhatsApp. The most popular ones are for personal expression, privacy protection, emojis and stickers that look like you, consistent digital identity, fun and engagement, and cultural and social comfort. Overall, WhatsApp's avatars are used purposefully for practical and social reasons.
Ever since WhatsApp allowed the creation of avatars, we've seen users expressing themselves with custom stickers and even setting avatars as their profile picture. Avatars let users represent themselves in a fun, customisable way. You can choose facial features, hairstyles, outfits, and accessories that reflect your personality, mood, or style, without needing a real photo.
Using an avatar instead of a real profile photo helps maintain privacy. It’s especially useful if you don’t want strangers, work contacts, or large groups to see your actual picture. You can also use the avatars you create to generate custom stickers, which you can use to react or respond in a way that feels more “you”.
In fact, your avatar can act as a recognisable identity across chats, groups, and status updates, even when you don’t want to change your profile photo often. It also helps to add a playful element to messaging. Notably, Avatars are available on both Android and iOS devices, meaning you can create and use the feature on your Android phone and iPhone without any restrictions.
Now, let's talk about how to create an avatar that'll suit your style on WhatsApp. But before you create an avatar, there are some certain things you need to understand:
- If you choose to delete your already created avatars, you can do that at any time, and the photo you used won’t be used for any other purpose.
- The avatars you delete will be deleted permanently; you can't reverse it once it's deleted.
- If you use photo to create your avatar, after the avatar is created, WhatsApp will delete the photo from its server.
- Lastly, gender selection is not available to avatar creations, and the entire feature is not available to linked devices.
How to create avatars on WhatsApp
There are two different ways to create avatars on WhatsApp (on both Android and iPhone):
- Manual creation of avatars: The manual creation involves designing your avatar from scratch by selecting features such as skin tone, facial structure, hairstyle, clothing, and accessories.
- Using photo to create avatars: Creating an avatar using a photo involves uploading a real image, which the system analyzes to automatically generate a digital likeness.
Manual Creation of Avatars
Follow these steps to manually create your avatars from start to finish:
- Open your WhatsApp and tap the three dot menu that's available at the top right corner your chat homepage.
- Tap "settings" and choose "Avatar" from the list of available settings.
- Tap "Create your Avatar" and the app will load the feature.
- Tap "Get started" and select "Create manually".
- Now, begin creating your preferred avatar by selecting your skin tone, hairstyle, face shape, and body type, then tap "Save" and continue.
- Once you're done with the creation, then you'll need to personalized your avatar's appearance.
- Personalized the appearance and tap "Save".
Create Avatars using photo
- Tap 3dots >> Settings >> Avatar >> Create your Avatar >> Get started.
- Here, you'll need to select "Create from selfie".
- Snap yourself and begin customising the photo.
- Your maybe prompted to give access/permission to camera; don't hesitate to do that.
- When you're done selecting your skin tone, hairstyle, face shape, and body type, then tap "Save" and continue.
- Set your avatar appearance and tap "Save" to save.
Final Note
Creation of Avatars processes are thesame on iPhone, iPad, Tablet, and Android. Furthermore, do not forget that you can delete your WhatsApp avatar at any time, and any photo used to create it is not reused and is removed from WhatsApp’s servers after creation. Deleted avatars are permanently erased and cannot be restored. Additionally, avatar creation does not include gender selection and is not available on linked devices.
