Video to GIF, free
Pick the section and turn it into a GIF — with a two-pass colour palette, so it does not come out banded. All inside your browser, with no upload.
Drop the video here, or choose a file
Up to 500 MB, up to 10 minutes. The footage stays in your browser — we never upload it.
It works on a phone, but noticeably more slowly: the encoding runs on your own device's processor. For longer videos a desktop is quicker.
What is a GIF still good for?
For what a video cannot do: it starts silently, on its own, immediately, and it can be pasted where there is no player at all — into an e-mail, into documentation, into a bug report, into a chat. A ten-second screen recording plays everywhere as a GIF; as a video it is a black rectangle with a play button.
In exchange, GIF is wasteful: it has no real motion compression, nearly every frame is a full picture, and it holds at most 256 colours. That is why the three settings on this page matter so much — the length, the frame rate and the width all multiply into the file size.
Why is this GIF not banded?
Because it is made in two passes. The first pass watches the whole selected section and builds a 256-colour palette for this footage specifically; the second maps the frames onto that palette. Most online converters work in a single pass against a fixed web palette — which is what makes sunsets striped and skin tones blotchy.
The palette is weighted towards the moving parts, and unchanged areas cost almost nothing per frame. That is why a GIF made from a static camera shot comes out far smaller than one from a handheld, constantly panning video — even at the same number of seconds.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no sound in the GIF?
Because the GIF format knows nothing about audio — it never did. If you need the sound too, do not make a GIF: cut the section out as a video and share that.
How big will the file be?
You see the estimate under the settings, before anything is made. A ten-second GIF at 480 pixels wide and 10 fps is typically a few megabytes. Doubling the frame rate doubles it; doubling the width quadruples it.
Why only 30 seconds?
Because beyond that a GIF is no longer the right answer: the file becomes unmanageably large, and making it takes a long time. For a longer section, trim the video and share it with a link.
How many fps do I need?
For a screen recording or a talking head, 8–10 fps is plenty and looks fine. For fast motion — sport, gaming — it is worth going to 12–15 fps, but count on the file being half again as large.