Twitch Emotes Not Working? The Two Android Bugs (2026)

You open a stream on your phone, tap an emote, and it lands in chat. You tap a second one and nothing happens. Or, since the middle of September, you tap a follower emote in a channel you have followed for years and Twitch tells you to follow the channel first. You press Follow. Nothing changes.

Those are two different bugs, a month apart, and the Google Play reviews let us put dates on both of them. The first one arrived with the 18 August update and was gone within about a week. The second one started showing up on 9 September, spread with build 31.2.0, and was still being reported on 31.3.0 on the day we pulled the data.

Twitch holds 4.18 stars from 5,763,991 Google Play ratings. 1,184,903 of those, 20.6% of everything the store has counted, are 1 to 3 stars. On the App Store the same app holds 4.72 from 2,806,333 ratings. Everything below is Android: the reviewers themselves say so, and one Spanish review says the follower emote bug only happens on Android.

Quick Answer: Why Are My Twitch Emotes Not Working?

It depends on what you see. If the first emote works and every tap after it does nothing, that was the August bug in builds 30.8.0 and 30.8.2, and it was fixed by 30.9.1: 100 US reviews described it between 18 and 27 August, and only one of the 234 reviews left on 30.9.1 mentions it, in the past tense. If Twitch says you must follow a channel you already follow, that is the September bug: 32 US reviews since 9 September, almost all on 31.2.0 and 31.3.0, taking 17.9% of all 1-3 star reviews between 16 and 24 September. Refollowing, clearing the cache and reinstalling did not fix it for anyone who tried. Two reviewers say the newest build fixed it for them; fourteen on that same build say it did not. The one workaround in the corpus that anyone reports working is the Twitch website in a browser.

How We Read These Reviews

We pulled the 6,000 most recent US Google Play reviews for Twitch on 25 September 2026. They run from 15 May to 24 September 2026, 133 days with at least one review on every day. 1,656 of them are 1 to 3 stars, and 805 of those are 120 characters or longer.

Emote complaints are short. "Emotes are broken" is a complete review. So for this subject we did not use a length filter: we pulled every review of any rating that mentions an emote, an emoji or an emoticon, 159 of them, and read all 159 by hand. We then did the same with 1,500 recent reviews from each of seven other Google Play storefronts: Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Poland and Japan. The UK storefront returned exactly the same 1,500 reviews as the US one, review for review, so we dropped it rather than count anything twice.

How rare this was before August matters for everything else here. From 15 May to 17 August, 4 of 1,032 negative US reviews mentioned emotes at all. That is 0.4%. Then the 18 August update landed.

Bug One: The Emote Works Once, Then Nothing (18 to 27 August)

Between 18 and 27 August, 100 US reviews describe emotes breaking. 89 of them are 1 to 3 stars, which is 39.2% of the 227 negative reviews Twitch received in those ten days. The dates are about as sharp as review data gets: 1 on 18 August, 21 on the 19th, 38 on the 20th, 33 on the 21st, 5 on the 22nd, and 2 more on the 27th. By build, 60 were written on 30.8.2 and 20 on 30.8.0.

The most useful thing about this cluster is how consistently people describe it. 30 of the 100 describe the same pattern: the first emote goes through, and after that the emote menu stops responding until you leave the stream or restart the app.

Ever since the last update, emotes are completely broken on my Moto G75 running Android 16. They only work once right when I open the app, after that, tapping on an emote does nothing. I’m forced to constantly restart the app and clear the cache just to use them a single time again. This is extremely frustrating. Please fix this bug!

editing rating, there seems to be a bug where you can only send emotes once. to send more you must close and re open the app.

Several reviewers noticed something else broke at the same moment. 12 of the 100 say the back button stopped working on streams too, so they could not leave a channel without closing the app:

Whatever they updated this time made it so you can only use your emotes once, then type it out manually after. This also then makes you unable to back out of the stream with the back button, and you'd have to slide down instead. Improve, don't regress...

It was not a US problem. We found 72 more reports of the same bug in the other seven storefronts: 25 in Spain, 21 in Germany, 10 in Japan, 9 in France, 4 in Brazil, 2 in Italy and 1 in Poland. The build numbers match the US ones.

German

Seit 19.08.26 ist die Nutzung von Emotes nicht mehr möglich. Das Textfenster hängt sich auf und die App muß ständig neu gestartet werden.

Spanish

Me gusta aunque desde la última actualización en teléfono no permite mandar mas de 1 emote, cada que entro a un stream y mando un emote, el segun no se manda y tengo que salirme del stream y volver a entrar para mandar otro

Japanese

急にスタンプが使えなくなった、正確には配信を開いたあと初めてスタンプ欄を開いた時のみスタンプを使うことができ、2回目以降スタンプ欄を開くと一切反応しなくなります。即急に修正をお願いしたいです

The German review dates it to 19 August and says the text box freezes and the app has to be restarted constantly. The Spanish one, which is five stars, says that since the last update you cannot send more than one emote and have to leave and re-enter the stream to send another. The Japanese one is the most precise description in the whole corpus: emotes work only the first time you open the emote panel after opening a stream, and from the second time on, the panel does not react at all.

What people tried

Nine US reviewers cleared the cache or reinstalled the app, and none of them says it fixed the bug. Two say clearing the cache bought them exactly one more emote. The same report turns up in France:

French

Depuis la mise à jour, on ne peut plus mettre d'emotes. J'ai vidé le cache, supprimé les données et désinstallé puis réinstaller l'application, ça ne change rien. Réparez ça purée

That reads: since the update you cannot post emotes, I cleared the cache, deleted the data, uninstalled and reinstalled, nothing changes.

The workarounds that people say actually worked were all about avoiding the emote panel. Four US reviewers type the emote code by hand instead, and one found a mode where the panel still worked:

Update to review - can not use quick pick emote options. The only way I can use emotes now is to type them out or search for them using :emote title. Very annoying!

New update has a bug that doesn't allow to use emotes on standard mode only on vertical or mod view.

11 of the 100 point out that they pay for subscriptions, and subscriber emotes are one of the main things a subscription buys. One asked for their money back. A Japanese reviewer says they asked, and were told in the support chat that a refund did not apply:

I typically like this app, but right now, I don't. It has a bug where you can't use the emotes you paid for. I feel like I deserve my money back since I can't use them. I have uninstalled, cleared the cache, logged in, and logged out, and still, there's no fix. I have to go to the web browser site to use it, but I don't like its format. refund my money or fix the damn app.

Japanese

スタンプが使えない。 配信を開き直すと使えるが、1度送信するとまた使えなくなる。サブスクライバー特典の一つであるスタンプ機能を使えないわけだが、返金の対象外とチャットで説明だった。 応援するストリーマーのために泣く泣く使っているがアプリケーションとしては星１。 早急な解決を求める。

The Japanese review says: emotes do not work, reopening the stream lets you send one and then they stop again, and since emotes are one of the subscriber benefits they asked about it, and were told in chat that it was not eligible for a refund.

When it ended

Our main reading is of negative reviews, so for the end of the story we looked at every rating. Three things line up.

First, the US reports stop. After 22 August there are exactly two, both on 27 August, and one of them is on 30.9.1 but describes the bug in the past tense ("Last update, emotes broke"). Build 30.9.1 first appears in the reviews on 25 August and collects 234 reviews in total. That is the only one about this bug.

Second, two reviewers say so directly. A three star German review from 22 August, on 30.8.2, is three words long:

German

emotes funktionieren wieder

That is "emotes work again". And the Japanese reviewer who had written on 22 August that emotes stopped working after the first one came back and added a note dated 26 August saying the emote bug is fixed.

Third, the version numbers. 30.8.0 and 30.8.2 carry 80 of the 100 US reports. 30.9.1 carries one.

One caution. In the second half of September, three reviews on 31.2.0 and 31.3.0 describe something that sounds like the August bug again, with emotes failing after the first message until you leave the app. Three reports is not a return of the bug, but if that is what you are seeing on a current build, you are not the only one.

Bug Two: "Follow to Use" in Channels You Already Follow (9 September to Now)

This one is different, and reviewers are careful to say so. The emote panel opens and responds. But when you tap a follower emote, the emote a streamer unlocks for anyone who follows the channel, Twitch says you need to follow the channel first. You already do.

32 US reviews describe it. The first two are on 31.1.2, on 9 and 10 September. Then it grows: 1 on 16 September, 2 on the 17th, 5 on the 19th, 3 on the 20th, and 9 on 23 September and 6 on the 24th. By build, 14 are on 31.2.0 and 10 on 31.3.0. Between 16 and 24 September those reports are 29 of the 162 negative US reviews, 17.9%.

Recent update broke follower emotes in the app. I can't use follower emotes for multiple streamers (some of whom I've been following for over a year), tapping the emote prompts me to follow even though I'm already a follower, and hitting the follow button in the prompt doesn't give me access to the emotes. It's specifically an app problem, follower emotes work fine on the web version in Google Chrome.

can't use follower emotes on followed channel because it tells you to follow the channel you are already following. please fix this bug. unfollowing and following again does not fix it. neither clearing app data or signing in again.

That second review is the most complete test report in the corpus: unfollowing and following again did not fix it, clearing app data did not fix it, signing in again did not fix it. Four US reviewers and one Spanish reviewer say refollowing did nothing, and seven reviewers across three languages point out they have followed the channel for a long time, some of them for years, which rules out the obvious explanation that the follow simply has not registered yet.

ALL follower emotes are broken.. been broken for over 4 days now and they have yet to fix this. PLEASE Fix This

We found 21 more reports in the other storefronts, 11 of them in Spain and 7 in Japan.

Spanish

Después de la última actualización no me deja usar emotes en los canales que sigo desde hace muchos años. Me dice "Debes seguir a este canal para desbloqueado", y solo pasa en android.

Japanese

フォローしてるのにフォロワースタンプ使おうとするとフォローボタン出て来てフォロワースタンプ使えないんだが🙄

The Spanish review says that after the last update it will not let them use emotes in channels they have followed for many years, the message is "you must follow this channel to unlock", and it only happens on Android. The Japanese one says: I follow, but when I try to use a follower emote the follow button comes up and I cannot use it.

The GIF connection

Several reviewers link the follower emote bug to the same update that added GIFs to the chat picker. Five of the 32 US reports mention GIFs in the same breath, and so does one of the Spanish ones:

Can't use follower emotes in any channel after the introduction to gif usage for tier 2 subscribers.

Spanish

No deja enviar emotes de seguidor aunque lo sigas desde hace años... Y fue desde que metieron al lado GIFS.

The Spanish one reads: it will not let you send follower emotes even if you have followed for years, and it started when they put GIFs next to them.

We cannot confirm the cause from review data, and we are reporting it as what people say, not as a finding. Separately from the bug, the redesigned picker has its own critics. 12 negative US reviews complain about the GIF tab itself, mostly that it crowds out emotes, and two say GIFs are limited to Tier 2 and Tier 3 subscribers:

The new gif feature sucks! Finding a particular emote is already hard enough and now you crammed another menu in it.

There is a counter signal, and it is worth including. Two four star reviewers from late August wanted GIFs to work better, and one says they had them for a day and then they went away:

wish the gifs would work on mobile i had it for 1 day then it went away

Is it fixed?

Not for most people, as of 24 September. Two reviewers say the newest update fixed it for them. A Brazilian four star review on 31.3.0, written on 24 September:

Portuguese

a última atualização trouxe um visual diferente e concertou a parte que seguidores de um canal não conseguisse usar emotes do mesmo (mesmo já seguindo).

That says the latest update brought a new look and fixed the part where followers could not use a channel's emotes even though they already followed it. A German three star review from 22 September says something similar: after the newest update, channel emotes can be sent again.

Against that, 10 US reviews on 31.3.0, all written on 23 and 24 September, and 4 Japanese reviews on the same build say the bug is still there. One of them is a four star review that has already tried the standard fixes:

Great streaming app. I get to watch and interact with my favourite streamers. The only challenge that I've been experiencing recently is that for the passed two updates, I can't use follower emotes for any streamer that I follow, I've already tried uninstalling and reinstalling which didn't fix the issue, clearing app cache didn't fix the issue either.

Two positive reports against fourteen negative ones on the same build does not add up to a fix. It is consistent with a fix that reached some accounts or devices and not others, or with a change on Twitch's side that has not finished rolling out. On the App Store, the listing shows version 31.3.2 released on 22 September; none of the Android reviews we pulled are on a build that new, so we cannot say whether it helps.

What Actually Works, According to the Reviews

Not much, and it is worth being plain about that. Here is what the corpus supports, from strongest evidence to weakest.

Update if you are on 30.8.0 or 30.8.2. The emote-once bug is tied to those two builds, and 30.9.1 onward is clean. If your problem is that emotes stop after the first one, this is the whole fix.

Do not spend time refollowing or reinstalling for the follower emote bug. Everyone in the corpus who reports trying refollowing, clearing the cache, clearing app data, signing out and in, or reinstalling says it did not help.

Use Twitch in a mobile browser for follower emotes. One US reviewer says follower emotes work fine on the website in Chrome, and a Japanese reviewer says they have heard the browser version works. That is two reports, one of them second hand, so treat it as the best available option rather than a proven one.

Type the code instead of using the panel. This is reported for the August bug only. Four people used it then. We found no report either way on whether typing a follower emote's code gets round the September prompt.

Do not expect a refund for emotes you could not use. One reviewer was told in support chat that it did not qualify, and one US reviewer who contacted support about the September bug says the replies did not address what they had written.

Two reviewers also say they installed an older version of the app from outside the Play Store to get emotes back. We are not recommending that. Installing an app package from an unofficial source is a real security risk for an app you are signed into, and the August bug was fixed by an ordinary update within about a week.

Read the Full Breakdown

You can read the full negative review breakdown for Twitch on Android and Twitch on iOS, or go straight to the trust check and apps like it. For how Twitch compares with Kick, YouTube and Rumble on complaint volume, see the live streaming apps ranked. For another redesign that broke a feature people relied on, see Discord's new UI, and for an update that broke the basic controls of a streaming app, see Pluto TV's channel and mute buttons. For a gaming app where a single button stopped doing anything, see Xbox sign in.