How to make Telegram animated stickers from an SVG (no After Effects)

miketogo — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 03:01:08 +0000

Telegram animated stickers and custom emoji use a format called TGS —
compressed Lottie animation data. The "official" way to make one is a Lottie /
After Effects pipeline, which is overkill if you already have a clean SVG icon.

Here's the fast path.

1. Start with a clean SVG

Export a vector SVG from Figma, Illustrator or Inkscape. Convert text to
outlines and avoid embedded raster images — TGS is vector-only.

2. Convert and animate in the browser

I use a free tool called SVG to TGS. You upload the SVG,
pick an animation preset, preview it in a Telegram-style frame, and export a
.tgs file. It runs fully client-side (WebAssembly), so nothing is uploaded.

3. Respect Telegram's limits

Telegram rejects stickers that break its rules, so the output has to be:

512×512 px
under 64 KB
up to 3 seconds
60 FPS

A good converter enforces this automatically so @Stickers accepts the file on
the first try.

4. Add it to Telegram

Send the .tgs to @Stickers for a sticker pack, or use the custom emoji flow
for Premium emoji.

Bonus: TGS ≠ TGA

A lot of "SVG to TGA" converters show up when you search — ignore them. TGA
is a static raster image format and has nothing to do with Telegram. You want
TGS.