GIFs balloon with duration — clips under ~15 s work best.
Updated July 2026
About this tool
GIF survives because it plays anywhere anything renders images — READMEs, GitHub issues, docs sites, chat apps. This tool decodes MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV video frame by frame and re-encodes it as an animated GIF, with the three controls that decide the file size: frame rate, output width and looping. For chat- and docs-friendly GIFs, 10–15 fps at up to 480 px wide is the sweet spot.
GIF is a 256-color-per-frame format, which is why smooth gradients and dark footage can show banding while screen recordings, UI demos and animations convert almost perfectly. Keep clips short — the format balloons with duration — and cut down to the interesting seconds first with the video trimmer. Frames are decoded, palette-quantized and encoded entirely in your browser, so the video never leaves your device.
The GIF is generated in a Web Worker in your browser — videos are never uploaded.
Frequently asked questions
How do I keep the GIF file size small?
Three levers matter: frame rate, width and duration. 10–15 fps looks smooth for most content; 480 px width is plenty for chat and docs; and every extra second adds frames. A 5-second clip at 12 fps and 480 px typically lands in the low single-digit megabytes — halve any of those numbers and the file roughly halves too.
Why does my GIF look grainier than the video?
GIF is a 256-color format: each frame maps to a limited palette, so smooth gradients and dark scenes can show banding or noise. Screen recordings, UI demos and animations convert almost perfectly; filmed footage with subtle color transitions loses the most. If you need full quality, a silent MP4 loop is the better format.
How long can the video be?
There is no hard limit, but GIF is an inefficient format that balloons with duration — beyond roughly 10–15 seconds, files get unwieldy fast. Trim the clip first (see our video trimmer), or for longer loops consider keeping it as a silent MP4, which stays several times smaller.
Is my video uploaded to create the GIF?
No. Frames are decoded, quantized to the GIF palette and encoded entirely in your browser — the video never leaves your device, and there are no server queues or file-size caps beyond your device's memory.