Video to GIF Maker
Make a GIF from any video on your phone or computer: a clip from your camera roll, a screen recording or a download.
- Free, no sign-up
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded or kept
Drop a video here
or choose one from your device: MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV
- Made on your device. Nothing is uploaded
- No watermark, no sign-up, no limits
- Fits a size limit, such as 10 MB, automatically
How to use it
Choose a video
From your camera roll, a screen recording or a download: MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV.
Pick the moment
Set Start and End, crop it if you like, and add a caption.
Save the GIF
Make it, then download it or save it to your photos.
It works in your browser, so the video is never uploaded and there is no watermark. Pick the moment, crop it to a square or story shape, add a caption, and save the GIF.
Why make your GIF here
Most online GIF makers upload your video to a server, cap how long or how big it can be, and put a watermark on the result unless you pay. This one does none of that, because the GIF is made by your own browser.
- Your video never leaves your device. It is read from your disk and made into a GIF on this page. Open the Network tab in your browser's developer tools while you make one to see for yourself: no request carries your video.
- No watermark, no sign-up, no limits. No daily cap and no limit on the size of the video. A GIF can be up to 3,000 frames long, over three minutes at 15 frames a second.
- Fits a size limit for you. Choose under 2, 5, 10, 15 or 25 MB and the GIF is made to fit, keeping your frame rate and length, ready for a chat app, a forum or an email.
- Colours that don't flicker. One palette is chosen for the whole clip, and parts of the picture that stay still keep their colours from frame to frame, so the GIF looks steady and stays small.
- See it before you make it. The preview loops your selection at the GIF's speed, with the crop and caption drawn exactly as they will come out.
- Exact timing. Trim to a hundredth of a second; the GIF plays at the video's own speed (or the speed you choose) with no drift on long clips.
- Phone videos come out right. Portrait videos stay upright, iPhone HEVC and HDR video is supported where your browser decodes it, and odd sizes and shapes keep their proportions.
Tips for a good GIF
- Keep it short. 2 to 6 seconds is the classic GIF. Longer clips work, but every second adds to the file.
- Crop to what matters. A square or 4:5 crop of the subject reads better in a chat than a wide shot, and is smaller.
- Try Boomerang. Forwards then backwards loops without a jump, so even a short moment plays smoothly forever.
- Mind the size. 480 px is sharp on a phone. Go up to 640 or 800 px only if it will be shown large.
What each setting does
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Size (longest side) | 240 to 1080 px. The longest side, so a portrait phone video stays narrow. 480 px is sharp on a phone; never larger than the video. |
| Frame rate | 5 to 50 frames a second. 15 is smooth for most clips; 10 or 12 for screen recordings; 20 to 30 for fast motion. |
| Speed | A quarter speed to four times as fast. Faster speeds skip frames rather than shortening each one, so the GIF stays small. |
| Direction | Forward, Reverse (backwards) or Boomerang (forwards, then backwards, in a seamless loop). |
| Caption | Bold white text with a black outline, at the top or bottom, wrapped onto up to three lines. |
| Crop | Original, Square, Portrait 4:5 or 3:4, Story 9:16, Widescreen 16:9 or Classic 4:3. Drag the frame on the preview to place it. |
| File size | No limit, or under 2, 5, 10, 15 or 25 MB. If the GIF comes out bigger, it is made again a little smaller until it fits. |
| Colours | 255, 127, 63 or 31 colours for the whole clip. Fewer colours make a smaller file with flatter shading. |
| Compression | Light, Medium or Strong: how much part of the picture may change before it is redrawn. On 12 real phone videos, Medium came out 9 to 29% smaller than Light and Strong 21 to 48% smaller, with a little less fine detail in motion. Cartoons and screen recordings with flat colours save less. |
| Dithering | Smooth (best for video), Pattern (steadier, smaller) or Off (flat colours, smallest, best for cartoons and screen recordings). |
| Loop | Loop forever, or play once and stop on the last frame. |
How it works
Your browser opens the video file where it is and decodes only the frames the GIF needs, using the same video decoder it uses to play videos. Browsers that can't decode frame by frame step a hidden video player through the clip instead, which is slower but works with anything the browser can play.
A GIF can hold at most 256 colours, so 48 frames spread over your selection are looked at first, and the best 255 colours for the whole clip are chosen from them. Every frame is then mapped to those colours with dithering, which spreads the small differences so gradients don't band. After the first frame, only the rectangle that changed is stored, and pixels inside it that didn't change are left see-through so the frame under them shows. Frames that are exactly the same are merged into one longer frame.
A GIF stores each frame's time in hundredths of a second. The times are rounded so that they add up exactly, which is why a 15 second clip plays for 15.00 seconds rather than drifting.
How we tested it
Before release, the GIF maker was run in Chrome on Windows against two sets of videos:
- Test videos with known content, made for the job: H.264, VP8, VP9 and AV1 video in MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV and MPEG-TS files; a phone video stored sideways with a rotation flag; an odd 202 × 118 size; a film-style letterbox and a pillarbox; a browser screen recording with no length written in it; a file with sound only; and a text file renamed .mp4.
- 12 real phone videos, from 0.3 to 14 seconds: iPhone HEVC MOVs at 1080 × 1920 and H.264 MP4s at 720 × 1280.
Every GIF was read back with a separate GIF reader, not the code that wrote it. Solid colour blocks came back within one level of the exact colour, a 4 second clip played for exactly 4.00 seconds, a sideways-stored video came out upright, black bars were gone from every edge, and reverse, boomerang, speed, trim, caption and play-once all did what they say. The sound-only file and the renamed text file each got a plain message instead of a broken GIF. With nothing to decode frames directly, as on some phones, every test video except the MPEG-TS one still converted through the slower route.
Not tested yet on real phones: Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android, and Firefox. They use the same code; if something doesn't work for you, tell us which browser and what kind of video.
More free tools for videos and pictures
The same GIF maker, with help for other files: MP4 to GIF converter, MOV to GIF converter and WebM to GIF converter. For photos, HEIC to JPG converts iPhone photos and WebP to JPG converts WebP and AVIF pictures, both in your browser too.
Frequently asked questions
Is my video uploaded?
No. The GIF is made inside your browser, on your own device: the video is read from your disk, turned into frames and written as a GIF without ever being sent anywhere. Nothing is stored on a server and nobody else can see it. You can check: open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab, and make a GIF; no request carries your video.
How do I make a GIF from a video?
Choose the video with the button above (on a phone it opens your photos and files). Set Start and End to the moment you want; a short moment of 2 to 6 seconds makes the best GIF. Crop it, add a caption or change the speed if you like, then tap Make GIF and save it.
How do I make a GIF from a video on iPhone?
Open this page in Safari, tap Choose a video and pick it from Photos. Set the part, tap Make GIF, then Save to Photos. The GIF goes into your library and plays in Messages, Mail and most apps. iPhone videos are HEVC, which Safari decodes, so they open straight away.
How do I make a GIF from a video on Android?
Open this page in Chrome, tap Choose a video and pick it from your gallery or files. Set the part and tap Make GIF, then Share to save it or send it to an app, or Download GIF to keep it in Downloads.
Is there a watermark or a limit?
No. There is no watermark, no sign-up, no daily limit and no limit on how big the video you start from can be. A GIF can be up to 3,000 frames long, which is over three minutes at 15 frames a second. Because nothing is uploaded there is no upload wait: in our tests a 30 MB phone video opened in under a second.
How do I make the GIF smaller?
Open More options and pick a file size: under 2, 5, 10, 15 or 25 MB. The GIF is made, and if it is too big it is made again a little smaller until it fits, keeping your frame rate, length and colours. Without a limit, these make it smaller: a smaller size (320 or 240 px), a lower frame rate (10 fps), a shorter part of the video, Medium or Strong compression (on real phone videos, Medium came out 9 to 29% smaller and Strong 21 to 48% smaller), or fewer colours. GIF is an old format, so a GIF is usually several times bigger than the video it came from.
Can I add text to the GIF?
Yes. Type a caption and choose top or bottom. It is drawn in bold white letters with a black outline, sized to the GIF and wrapped onto up to three lines. The preview shows it exactly as it will look.
Can I crop the GIF to a square?
Yes. Pick a shape (Square, Portrait 4:5 or 3:4, Story 9:16, Widescreen 16:9 or Classic 4:3) and drag the frame on the preview, or use the arrow keys, to choose what the GIF shows. If the video has black bars, as film clips and screen recordings often do, a Remove black bars option appears under the preview.
Which video formats work?
MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV and MPEG-TS files, with H.264, HEVC (H.265), VP8, VP9 or AV1 video, whenever your browser can decode them. Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox decode H.264, VP9 and AV1. HEVC, the format iPhones record in, works in Safari, and in Chrome and Edge on computers whose graphics can decode it. If a video doesn't open, the page says which format it is and what to try.
Can I make a GIF from a YouTube or TikTok link?
No. The tool works with a video file on your device; it never fetches anything from the internet. That is also why nothing you make can be seen by anyone else. Only make GIFs of videos you have the right to use.
A free tool from LetRelay: no sign-up, nothing stored on a server.