Kick Emotes: How to Add Your Own and What Popular Ones Mean

You upload your own Kick emotes in the creator dashboard: Channel → Community, then the "+" button in the Channel Emotes or Subscriber-only Emotes block. The file is a PNG or GIF, 500×500 pixels, up to 1 MB. You can add up to 60 channel emotes; they are available right after you create your channel but work only in your own chat. Subscriber emotes (up to 24) unlock with paid subscriptions and work for the subscriber in any Kick chat. Below you will find the upload steps, emote-only mode, 7TV on Kick, collectible emotes and a table explaining popular emotes.

What types of emotes exist on Kick

Five kinds of emotes live in Kick chat at the same time. They differ in who can see them and where they can be used.

7TV extension emotes are a separate case. Kick knows nothing about them: only viewers with the extension installed see the image, everyone else just gets a plain word.

There are two ways to send an emote: click the smiley next to the input field and pick an image from the menu, or type the emote code by hand. Letter case matters: KEKW and Kekw are different words, and only the exact spelling will work.

How to add channel emotes

Channel emotes are the easiest way to give your chat its own language. They need no subscriptions and no verification: you can upload them on the day you register.

1. Open the creator dashboard at dashboard.kick.com.
2. In the Channel menu, go to the Community section. Subscriber badges live there too.
3. In the Channel Emotes block, click "+" and choose a file.
4. Come up with a name. This is what viewers will type in chat, so keep it short and avoid names that look like other emotes.
5. Click Save. The emote will appear in your chat's emote menu.

To delete an emote, hover over it in the same section and click the trash icon. The freed slot can be filled with a new one right away.

Subscriber emotes

This is the main reason to subscribe to your channel. A subscriber can use your emotes in other people's Kick chats, and each one works as a small ad for your channel. When a subscription ends, the emotes disappear; if the subscriber cancels, they stay until the end of the month already paid for.

They are uploaded the same way as channel emotes, only through "+" in the Subscriber-only Emotes block. There are up to 24 slots. Kick's help center says subscriber emotes are unlocked for Affiliate status and verified channels. In practice it all comes down to paid subscriptions: the Enable Subscriptions button appears after 5 hours of total streaming, and the subscriptions themselves are connected through Stripe.

There is a catch for streamers from Russia and the CIS. Stripe does not work with these countries, and Kick states plainly that payouts are unavailable if Stripe is not supported in your country. So channel emotes are open to everyone, but subscriber emotes may not work out. For more on getting started on the platform, statuses and monetization, see our guide on how to stream on Kick and where to get the OBS key.

File requirements

Kick does not publish separate requirements for the frame count or duration of a GIF, so the main limit for animation is the same 1 MB. A long animation with lots of colors will not fit: cut frames and reduce the palette. Make the background transparent, otherwise a square will show around the emote in chat.

Rules: what Kick will remove

Kick's help center does not describe a separate pre-approval check like Twitch has. Responsibility lies with the streamer: you answer for emotes uploaded by you or your moderators. Kick removes emotes that break community guidelines, and for repeat offenses it can issue a warning, restrict the channel or ban it.

• Prohibited content. Hate speech, violence, explicit and sexual images, promotion of anything illegal.
• Other people's rights. You cannot use other artists' work without permission, other streamers' assets, logos, brand names or the faces of real people, including celebrities. Frames from movies, cartoons and games are also off limits without the rights.

The takeaway is simple: commission emotes from an artist with a transfer of rights, or draw them yourself. A ready-made emote with a blogger's face or a frame from an anime can vanish at any moment, along with your chat's habit of using it.

How to make emotes people will actually use

An emote is uploaded at 500 pixels, but in chat it takes up the size of a line of text. Anything that cannot be read at that scale does not exist for the viewer.

• Test it small. Shrink the image to 28–32 pixels and look at it on dark and light backgrounds. If the emotion is not clear within a second, simplify.
• One emotion per emote. Laughter, sadness, hype, shock, "gg". A complex scene with three characters turns into a blur.
• Big and high-contrast. A face or silhouette filling the frame, a thick outline, minimal detail. Text inside an emote is almost never readable; if you need it, use one short word.
• One consistent style. One artist, one line weight, one palette, one mascot or character. That way the set is recognizable at a glance, even when a subscriber uses your emote in someone else's chat.
• Cover the basic reactions. Give the first 8–10 slots to what people type on any stream: greeting, laughter, sadness, delight, "that's it", love. Add memes about specific situations on your channel later, once they appear in chat on their own.
• Short, clear codes. Use the same prefix for all names, for example part of your nickname, so viewers can find the emote quickly by typing the start of the code.

For more on planning a set of emotes and badges and what to order from an artist, see our article on creating emotes and badges for your channel.

Emote-only mode

The mode exists. While it is on, only messages made up of emotes get into chat. Any text is blocked, and Kick treats regular emoji from your phone keyboard as text too. It can be turned on by the channel owner or a moderator:

• with the command /emoteonly on in chat, and turned off with /emoteonly off;
• with the toggle in the Channel Actions widget in the creator dashboard or in the moderator side panel.

The mode is handy in two situations: at a hype moment, when you want a wave of reactions without text, and during harassment or spam, to quickly stop a flood of insults without closing the whole chat. 7TV emotes will not help in this mode: for Kick they are ordinary words. In the same settings you will also find slow mode (/slow on), followers-only chat (/followonly on) and subscribers-only chat (/subonly on, which only the channel owner can enable).

7TV on Kick: does it work and how to connect it

It works. 7TV officially supports Twitch, Kick and X, gives 1000 free slots per channel on all of them, and changes to the set show up for viewers instantly, with no page reload.

1. Install the 7TV browser extension and refresh the Kick tab.
2. For the streamer: sign in at 7tv.app, open your account settings and link Kick in the Connections section. Only the channel owner can manage the channel's emotes, through the connected platform.
3. In the Emotes tab, find the emote you want, add it to your set and, if you like, rename it for your channel only.
4. Make sure the set is enabled in the settings, otherwise the emotes will not appear.
5. You can upload your own images directly to 7TV following the requirements in the table above.

The main limitation is that only viewers with the extension see the emotes. The 7TV help center describes Kick support specifically through the browser extension, and a viewer in the Kick mobile app will see just a word instead of OMEGALUL. For Russia there is one more problem: since October 2024 the 7tv.app site has been on the Roskomnadzor registry. So keep your channel's most important reactions in native Kick emotes, which everyone sees. To learn how 7TV, BTTV and FFZ work on Twitch, read our article on Twitch emotes and their meanings.

Kick global and collectible emotes

Kick's main feature: many emotes that on Twitch exist only in extensions are built into the platform itself. KEKW, Sadge, AYAYA, PogU, GIGACHAD, modCheck, Prayge are visible to everyone without 7TV. Kick's global set includes several dozen such emotes, plus a separate emoji set of more than 60 smileys with codes like emojiAngel, emojiFire, emojiCry. Kick changes the sets from time to time; the full current list is in the chat's emote menu.

Collectible emotes exist too. They are given out in daily rewards: watch streams for one hour in total during the day, claim the reward, and the roulette gives you an emote or a badge. You cannot choose it in advance. What you receive is stored on the kick.com/collectibles page. Kick does not publish an official catalog of collectible emotes or rarity rules.

Table: what popular emotes mean in Kick chat

All emotes in the table are global, meaning they work in any Kick channel without extensions.

OMEGALUL is not part of Kick's global set. It is typed by viewers with 7TV, and everyone else just sees the word.

Bring your chat to life: emotes and bots

Emotes work when there is someone in chat to type them. On a new channel, a silent chat scares viewers away more than a small audience does. Since 2015 we have been helping streamers get their first viewers and activity: chat bots for Kick post messages and emotes following a script, and our other services for the platform are collected in the Kick promotion section. A lively chat picks up new emotes faster, and viewers get used to them from the very first streams.

Frequently asked questions

How many emotes can you add on Kick?

Up to 60 channel emotes and up to 24 subscriber emotes. Through 7TV you can add up to 1000 more, but only viewers with the extension will see them.

What emote size does Kick need?

500×500 pixels, PNG or GIF format, up to 1 MB. A transparent background is best.

Can you upload an animated emote?

Yes, as a GIF. Kick does not publish a frame limit; the restriction is the 1 MB file size.

Why don't my emotes work in someone else's chat?

Channel emotes work only in your channel's chat. In other Kick chats only subscriber emotes work, and only while the subscription is active.

How do you turn on emote-only mode on Kick?

Type /emoteonly on in chat, and /emoteonly off to turn it off. The channel owner and moderators can do this, and there is also a toggle in the Channel Actions widget.

Why can't I see 7TV emotes on Kick?

They show only when the 7TV extension is installed in your browser. For viewers without the extension, including those in the Kick mobile app, text appears instead of the image.