How to turn an MP4 into a GIF
- Drop the video on the box above, pick it with the button, or paste it. MP4 works everywhere; MOV and WebM work when your browser can play them.
- Trim it. Type a start and end time, or play the video, pause where you want, and press "use current time". GIFs get heavy fast, so keep it short: 3 to 8 seconds is the sweet spot.
- Pick the size. 15 fps and 640 px wide is a good default for screen recordings and product demos. Go to 480 px for chat apps, 800 px when text needs to stay readable.
- Convert and download. You get a preview, the final file size, and a download button. Change a setting and convert again; nothing is queued on a server, so it is instant to retry.
Why no upload matters here
Most online GIF makers send your video to their server, convert it there, and hand back a link. That is a problem when the clip is a screen recording of your product, a client's dashboard, or a bug report with real customer data in it. This tool reads the video with your browser's own player, grabs frames onto a canvas and encodes the GIF locally with a small open source encoder. You can load the page, turn off Wi-Fi, and it still works. It is also faster: there is no 200 MB upload before anything happens.
What the settings actually do
Frame rate. GIF has no real video compression, so every extra frame costs bytes. 10 fps is fine for slides and UI walkthroughs, 15 fps looks smooth for most things, 20 fps is for fast motion. Going from 20 to 10 fps roughly halves the file.
Width. File size grows with the area, so halving the width cuts the size to about a quarter. Pick the smallest width where the text in your clip is still legible.
Quality. A GIF can only show 256 colors at once. "Best" keeps the full palette and only skips pixels that did not change between frames. "Balanced" and "Smallest" use fewer colors and treat tiny changes (video noise, gradients) as unchanged, which can cut the size by half on camera footage. Screen recordings, where most of the frame stays still, compress very well at any setting.
Limits worth knowing
- One GIF can hold up to 600 frames here (30 seconds at 20 fps). Past that, a GIF is the wrong format: a muted, looping MP4 is ten times lighter and plays everywhere.
- Your browser has to be able to decode the video. iPhone videos recorded in HEVC play in Safari and in recent Chrome on Mac, but not in every browser on Windows. If you get an error, try Safari or export the clip as H.264 MP4 first.
- Audio is dropped, because GIF has no audio track.
Already have a GIF that is too heavy for Slack, Discord or an email? Our GIF compressor shrinks it the same way, also without uploading anything.
Recording your screen to make the GIF?
Capturo for Mac records the screen or an area as MP4 on a clean gradient background, and Convert Video to GIF turns clips up to 45 seconds into a 12 fps GIF from the menu bar. One-time $29, no subscription.
See the Mac app