WhatsApp update finally brings stickers to messaging app, years after just about every competitor

'Stickers help you share your feelings in a way that you can't always express with words'

Revellers dressed up as dancers of 'Black Swan' check their mobile phones next to revellers dressed up as a Whatsapp logo as they take part in New Year's celebrations in Coin, near Malaga, southern Spain, early January 1, 2015 (REUTERS/Jon Nazca)

WhatsApp has finally added stickers, bringing it in line with just about every other messaging app.

And it has embraced them in a big way: creating its own stickers and commissioning designers to do so, as well as making it possible for anyone to make their own.

For people with the update, using a sticker is simple. Just press the sticker button that will appear and select the one you want to use.

It will then appear in the chat, in the same way that gifs and the messages themselves do.

"Whether with a smiling teacup or a crying broken heart, stickers help you share your feelings in a way that you can't always express with words," WhatsApp said in a blog post announcing the change.

At the moment, the selection seems relatively limited. But it looks set to expand as time goes on and designers take advantage of the tools that the Facebook-owned app has given them to create new ones.

Stickers can be downloaded like any other app in the Google Play or App Store, and will appear in WhatsApp as soon as they are.

WhatsApp says the feature will roll out to iPhone and Android soon. But some users already have access to them, and they appear to be gradually getting pushed out to others right now.

Stickers have gradually appeared in most other messaging apps, including Apple's iMessage and Telegram.