Understanding animated GIFs

A reader has a question about animated GIFS.

“Can you please tell me how to get gifs into an email and into my Facebook account? I have tried everything I have read and nothing will work. I need them to actually work like a GIF and not just a picture.”

Animated GIFS files contain a number of images or frames in a single file and when they are played, you have a moving image.

Let’s understand how you’re able to use animated GIFs on Facebook. You don’t upload them like you do photos where a copy of the file is uploaded to Facebook’s servers. To display an animated GIF in a Facebook post, you give the location of where the GIF is hosted on a server to Facebook and they display the GIF. There are two ways to do it.

Facebook has their own system to search for popular GIFs and include them in posts or messages. I detailed that process in an article earlier in the week.  Click here to read that article.

Now, if you’re following the method described in the article and the GIFs don’t seem to post, it may just be the browser that you’re viewing them in. They might not be showing up on mobile or just in your browser, but others might be able to see them.

If you want to include an animated GIF not offered by Facebook, you’ll have to find the web address for that link. If it’s a GIF that you’ve created, you’ll need to upload it to a server to host the image.  Here’s how I’d include a GIF I uploaded. I uploaded a picture of my cat to my blog a few years ago. But this could work for images uploaded to other sites.  I right click and choose Open link from the drop-down menu.

Then copy the link for the GIF.

Then open a new Facebook post and paste the link like you would any other link. You can delete the web address from the post once the GIF displays if you like.

The GIF will be displayed on your FB post.

If you’re looking for a good place to find or to host original GIFS you want to upload, I suggest GIPHY.

Now, on to email. Again, you aren’t going to just attach the GIF to the email. It’ll show up as an attachment that the recipient has to open and view in a program that displays animated GIFs.  The trouble you’ll hit with animated GIFs is that unless you send them as an attachment, both your email and the email service/program used by the recipient have to support the display of animated GIFS.

Here, I right clicked on a GIF I liked online and chose copy. Then I pasted it into my email.

I was able to successfully send it to myself at multiple other email addresses. I hope this information helps.