GIF maker
Turn a few seconds of video into a GIF you can paste anywhere, and keep the file small enough that it actually loads where you paste it.
- One palette measured across the whole clip, so the colours do not crawl between frames
- Dithering on for gradients, off for screen recordings and line art: your call
- Pick the seconds, the frame rate, the width and the number of colours
- The encoder runs in your browser: no upload, no queue, no watermark
Drop a video here
or click to choose: MP4, WebM, MOV and M4V are safe bets
Three things drive the file size, in this order: the width, the number of frames, and the number of colours. Halving the width quarters the pixels. Dropping from 256 colours to 64 usually costs less than it sounds like and saves more than you expect, because GIF compresses runs of the same colour and a smaller palette makes longer runs.
Turn dithering off for screen recordings, logos and line art. There are no gradients there to band, so the speckle it adds is pure noise, and noise is exactly what this compression scheme cannot pack.
What a GIF actually is, and why that decides everything
A GIF is a sequence of still frames, each one drawn from a palette of at most 256 colours, compressed by a scheme that packs repeated runs. Every control on this page is really a control over one of those three facts, and knowing which is which is the difference between guessing and steering.
A photograph has far more than 256 colours in it, so the palette has to be chosen, and choosing it badly is what makes a GIF look like a GIF. Dithering hides the error by scattering it, at the cost of the very repetition the compression relies on.
Size: frames, then dimensions, then colours
In that order. Halving the frame rate halves the file; halving the width quarters it. Dropping the palette from 256 to 64 usually takes a third off, and often takes more than you would expect, because fewer colours mean longer runs of the same colour and longer runs compress harder.
Trim first. Two seconds of a clip at a good size beats six seconds of a smeared one, and no amount of palette work will rescue a GIF that is simply too long.
When to turn dithering off
For screen recordings, logos, diagrams and line art: anything with flat areas of colour. There are no gradients there to band, so the speckle dithering adds is pure noise, and noise is precisely what this compression scheme cannot pack. The file gets bigger and the picture gets worse.
Leave it on for anything photographic. A sky or a face reduced to 256 colours without dithering shows visible steps, and the scatter is what hides them.
Why not just use a video
Usually you should: an MP4 of the same clip is a fraction of the size and looks better. GIF survives because it plays anywhere without a player, loops without asking, and can be pasted into places that will not take a video at all. That is the whole case for it, and it is a good one in the places it applies.
Questions
Is my video uploaded?
No. The frames are read and encoded in this tab; the file never leaves your machine.
Why is my GIF so large?
Almost always length or frame rate. Trim it shorter and drop the frame rate before touching anything else: those two are worth more than every other control put together.
Why does it look grainy?
That is dithering, hiding the fact that the palette is smaller than the picture needs. Raise the colours, or accept the grain: those are the two options a 256-colour format gives you.
Why does my screen recording look worse with dithering on?
Because there is nothing for it to hide. Flat colour needs no scatter, and the scatter it adds stops the compression finding the runs it lives on. Turn it off.
Can I make a GIF from a phone video?
Yes, if the browser can decode it. HEVC from some iPhones is the usual exception, and the page says so rather than failing silently.
Does it loop?
Yes, forever, which is the GIF default and almost always what is wanted.