How to reduce GIF size
An animated GIF is a stack of pictures, and the file grows with every frame. Here is what makes it smaller and what that costs you.
Why a GIF is so big
A GIF stores a sequence of frames, each limited to 256 colours, with only simple compression. A few seconds at a decent size can run to many megabytes, because nothing in the format understands that most of the picture stays the same from frame to frame. Smaller means saving the same picture with fewer pixels, fewer frames, fewer colours, or storing only what changes.
Three things that shrink it
Each trades something for size.
- Smaller picture. Half the width and height leaves a quarter of the pixels. This usually makes the biggest difference.
- Fewer frames. Dropping every second frame roughly halves the rest, and the animation looks a little less smooth. The playing time can stay the same.
- Smarter frames. Each frame can hold only the area that changed from the one before, and tiny changes that no one would notice can be ignored. Fewer colours also help, and may add grain.
In the browser, without uploading
The GIF compressor opens one or several GIFs and has three settings:
- Compression: Light (looks the same), Medium (much smaller) or Strong (smallest, some grain).
- Size: keep the size, or 75%, 50% or 33%.
- Frames: keep every frame, drop every second, or keep one in three. Dropped frames give their time to the frame before, so the GIF plays at the same speed.
On a generated 400 by 300 test GIF with 40 frames (65.8 KB), Light and Medium both gave 46.9 KB (27% smaller) and Strong gave 42.8 KB (33% smaller). Medium with the size at 50% and every second frame dropped gave 13.3 KB (79% smaller), at 200 by 150 pixels and 20 of the 40 frames. Real GIFs will differ: a screen recording with a still background shrinks a lot, while a busy filmed clip shrinks less. If the result would not be smaller, you get your original back and the page says so.
Everything happens inside your browser tab, so the GIF never leaves your device, and the size limit is your device’s memory (phones hold less).
When a video is better
If the place you are posting to accepts video, an MP4 of the same clip is usually far smaller than any GIF; see how to convert a GIF to MP4. To make a GIF from a video in the first place, read how to make a GIF from a video.
Questions
How do I get a GIF under a size limit?
Start with Medium in the GIF compressor, then lower the size to 75% or 50%, and drop every second frame, until the result shown is under your limit.
Will it still be animated and the same speed?
Yes. The result is still an animated GIF with the same timing, because the time of any dropped frame is added to the frame before.
Why did I get my original file back?
If the compressed version would not be smaller, the tool returns your original unchanged and says so. The GIF is already well compressed.
Is my GIF uploaded?
No. The GIF is decoded and written again by code in your browser tab.