toolkit Pick as many videos as you like above and choose how many seconds to convert — 3, 5 or 10, always taken from the start of each clip. They come back as animated .gif files right here, in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded: every frame is decoded and re-encoded on your own device, so a clip you have not published yet does not have to be handed to a server first.
This is a real conversion, not a container swap
This site's MOV to MP4 tool is a container rewrite — the compressed video is copied across untouched, which is why it is instant. A GIF cannot work that way: GIF has no concept of a compressed video stream at all, so every frame is decoded, resized if needed, and packed into the GIF fresh. That is real, if modest, work, and it is why there is a length limit — ten seconds at ten frames a second is a hundred decoded frames held in memory before the GIF is written, and a full-length clip at full frame rate would ask your browser for gigabytes of RAM for very little benefit, since nobody actually wants a ten-minute animated GIF.
Several clips at once
Unlike a container conversion, this is real work: every frame is decoded and re-encoded, so a clip takes seconds rather than an instant. A batch is therefore a queue — clips convert one at a time so they are not competing for the same hardware, each showing its own progress, and any one can be cancelled without touching the rest. The length you choose applies to every clip in the batch, and the finished GIFs are handed back together as a single .zip.
Why the frame rate and size are fixed
GIF has essentially no compression for photographic content — each frame is reduced to a 256-colour palette, and there is no equivalent of the motion prediction a real video codec uses between frames. An uncapped conversion at your source video's native resolution and frame rate would produce a huge file for very little visual gain, so this tool samples at a fixed 10 frames a second and caps width at 480 pixels, downscaling wider video to fit. Both are fixed rather than configurable, the same way this site's other tools use curated presets instead of open-ended knobs — the combination is what most "video to GIF" results converge on anyway, for something that is still watchable and stays a reasonable size to share.
If a video will not convert
Turning frames into a GIF needs your browser's own video decoder to read the source, which is a real requirement, not a formality this tool works around. Most browsers decode H.264 and HEVC without trouble, but Firefox ships no HEVC decoder on any platform, and HEVC is what an iPhone records by default. If your browser cannot decode the source codec at all, this tool says so rather than failing silently or producing an empty file.
Your video does not leave the browser
There is no upload, and there is no server-side conversion — this site has no endpoint that accepts a file at all. Decoding and re-encoding happen in JavaScript running in this tab, reading the file straight off your disk. You can check that claim rather than take it on faith: open your browser's network tab and convert something, or read the Content-Security-Policy this page is served with, which forbids the page from sending data anywhere but back to this origin.
Frequently asked questions
Does the GIF have sound?
No. GIF is a purely visual format and cannot contain an audio track at all, regardless of whether the source video has one.
Can I convert several videos to GIF in one go?
Yes. Add as many clips as you like; they convert one at a time, each with its own progress bar and cancel button, and the chosen length applies to all of them. The GIFs come back as one .zip, and there is no limit on how many you convert.
Can I convert more than 10 seconds?
Not on this page. Ten seconds is a hard limit, chosen so the conversion stays fast and the result stays a reasonable size — GIF has no real compression for video-length photographic content, so a longer clip gets large very quickly.
Can I pick which part of the video becomes the GIF?
Not yet — it always takes the first however-many seconds you choose. If the moment you want is later in the clip, trim the video with an editor first, then convert the trimmed file here.
Why is my GIF a large file?
GIF has no real compression for photographic content the way a video codec does, so a few seconds of a busy or high-motion scene can outweigh a much longer video file. Shorter, simpler clips produce smaller GIFs.
Does this work with MOV, MKV or WebM sources, not just MP4?
Yes — anything your browser's own video decoder can read, which covers H.264 and HEVC video in essentially any common container.
Will this work in every browser?
Decoding depends on your browser's own codec support. Chrome, Edge and Safari handle H.264 and HEVC video; Firefox has no HEVC decoder at all, so an HEVC source (the iPhone default) will not convert there, and the tool will tell you so rather than fail silently.