Unable to remove stickers and emojis from my iPhone keyboard after iOS 18.3 update

Same problem here... the two options on the bottom left of the emoji menu in Messages are SUPER ANNOYING.

I had previously switched these off, but since updating to 18.3.1 they are back like an unwelcome fart in a lift.

Dear Apple software, please can we get a working option to remove these ASAP? Many thanks.

This functionality is not welcome. By all means offer it as an option, but forcing on users is bad product development, especially as it negatively interferes with people's learned experience with the HMI.

Reread the complaint sir, we understand that we can't delete them entirely, but given that the settings offer the function to turn them off, it's a bit ridiculous that toggling that settling doesn't actually turn it off.

The placement of the icons or tabs for memoji or stickers, within the emoji keyboard, is extremely problematic. Turning this function off was an option before, so why has that option been removed?

ever since my phone updated to 18.3 update I have not been able to remove the stickers from my recent emoji and is very annoying because it looks very unorganized and un-neat to me and it gives me ocd. So Apple, you need to fix this issue because everybody is very annoyed with it and it’s just not necessary some people enjoy the stickers some people so please fix the toggle in the settings section.

Dear apple, I have given you my life in electronics and let you spy on me daily. Please remove this feature because based on all your spying you should know I have no interest in the sticker/ memoji nonsense that is made for children.

I already have the stickers toggle turned off and deleted all of my stickers from my phone, and it still appears in my recent emojis along with a gif I used two weeks ago… which is super annoying. Do you have any other ways of getting rid of Memojis on the phone?

What exactly did you do? I’ve been trying and I haven’t gotten anything that lets me delete them. I wish I hadn’t used one at all. Now it’s stuck in my frequently used emojis and won’t budge. About to switch to a different phone. The updates are supposed to be improvements not continual annoyances.

Same here and it is 100% connected to the update. I put off updates as long as possible (due to things like this) but today my phone did it without me choosing to. I had previously disabled the stickers setting under keyboard because I was annoyed at the stickers clogging up my recent emojis (especially since it doesn’t work properly, the stickers show even when I haven’t used them in ages compared to other emojis, so they’re showing as more recent than emojis I KNOW I’ve used more recently) but now that my phone snuck the update in on me they’re back to showing in my recent emojis. Tried turning the setting back on then off again to see if that’d trigger it to fix itself, but no luck.

OMG THANK YOU!!! My most recent emojis became a junk fest (and as others have said, even with bitmojis I haven’t used in a year or more)! This worked and I can’t thank you enough GothieGirl!! I also had deleted my stickers but the bitmojis were still hanging out in recents 🙄. So again, thanks for helping more than Apple seems to be willing to do at this point.

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Please fix this. I NEVER want to send a sticker when I am in the emoji keyboard. I have fatfingered sending a sticker more than five times now. What’s worse, sending a sticker is *instant* autosend in some messaging apps, when I am usually in the emoji keyboard in order to select an emoji — an action which does not autosend. What’s even worse, those stickers now appear in my recent emoji list, and are therefore even MORE fatfingerable than before, and cannot be removed, even though I nuked the Memoji entirely. Extremely frustrating. I am so frustrated that I would remove the emoji keyboard entirely if it were necessary in order to remove stickers.

Thank you SO much! I have been trying to solve this issue for MONTHS, and none of the recommendations online were helping. This actually worked!! I now have my recently used emojis back to normal! Thank you thank you thank you!

Thank you a thousand times!! 🙏 It was so embarrassing to accidentally send big emoji stickers in conversations instead of putting an emoji in the text I am in the middle of composing. Your suggestion is the only one finally working for me. 👏

Same, still can’t remove Memoji. I started this whole rabbit hole of web searching this morning because I was searching for a way to create my own self-selected Favorite Emoji tab, which there is not (because it might clutter the experience to have a “favorites” AND “most frequent” section on my emoji keyboard).

The categories that clutter my keyboard are the Stickers & Memoji’s (even though I have NEVER used stickers or Memoji’s in the 10+ years I have had iPhones). I would prefer self-selected favorite emojis over stickers/Memoji’s cluttering my keyboard ANY day.

Poor user experience Apple, let us turn off Stickers AND Memoji’s! And yes, I already went to my Keyboard settings and toggled off Stickers, AND yes, I already deleted any human Memoji’s, but you don’t allow users to delete the prefilled Memoji’s like the dragons or crabs or sheep’s, and yes, I restarted my messages app (and even my phone for good measure so please don’t give the advice to delete Memoji’s straight from the Messages keyboard either).

> but you don’t allow users to delete the prefilled Memoji’s like the dragons or crabs or sheep

One hundred percent, this!! I have followed ALL the advice in this thread to mitigate what I can, but I am STILL always two screen fumbles away from sending friends some super hecking embarrassing sticker of a 3d cartoon mouse going &$!#%

I have this issue too. I have tried all the doses. Resetting my phone, resetting keyboard, deleting emoji keyboard and adding back. I even texted myself like 40 new emojis to update the recently used list. Did not work. Even the sticker emoji I created for myself won’t update. I’ve had a happy 4th of July Bitmoji icon in the recent list that won’t go away. What gives???