Googles celebrates 2018 Winter Olympics with new AR Stickers for Pixel phones

Google is celebrating the arrival of the 2018 Winter Olympics with a new AR Stickers pack for the Pixel and Pixel 2.

The sports-themed stickers are the first notable addition to the playful camera mode since the launch of Stranger Things and Star Wars: The Last Jedi packs last December. There’s also an update to the Blocks AR pack which adds more balloon types and a microphone sticker.

The Winter Sports pack, meanwhile, includes a dancing ice skater, a downhill skier, two hockey players, a snowman, a snow-covered tree, and a fully-dressed polar bear.

Each sticker has its own animation when dragged onto the screen, such as the hockey boys who put their sticks down and engage in an old-fashioned punch-up.

To get the updates, all you have to do is boot up the camera app on your Pixel or Pixel 2, head over to the menu, tap AR Stickers, and then scroll along past the existing packs and tap the Winter Sports or Blocks AR icons.

Alternatively, you can install the update manually via the Play Store button below. It’s worth noting that the main AR Stickers app has to be updated to version 1.1 for this to work. The update has been rolling out of the past few days, so if you can’t see it just yet I imagine you won’t have long to wait.

AR Stickers are currently exclusive to Pixel phones running Android 8.1 Oreo. While there’s no word on a wider release for the ARCore-powered app, you can play around with augmented reality objects on almost any Android device thanks to a recent Motion Stills update. It’s not quite as feature-packed as the Pixel version, but it’s fun all the same.

Be sure to check out our guide for how to get started with the Pixel AR Stickers here, and let us know your thoughts on the new packs in the comments.