Compress
Compress an animated GIF
Animated GIFs get large quickly, because the format stores a full picture for every frame and has no way to describe motion. Two things make one smaller: fewer pixels per frame, and fewer colours in each. This tool applies both and shows what they actually bought - measured here, halving the dimensions of a 4 MB animation removed about 70% of it, and cutting the palette as well took it to 12% of the original. Frames are never dropped and timing is never altered, so the animation you get back is the one you brought, only lighter. Everything runs in your browser.
How to compress an animated GIF
- Drop an animated GIF onto the upload area.
- Choose a size. Halving the dimensions is the single biggest saving available.
- Choose how many colours each frame may use - fewer is smaller, and flat graphics tolerate it far better than photographs.
- Compress, then check the before and after before you keep it.
Supported formats
This tool accepts GIF, WebP, PNG and AVIF files. Everything is decoded by your own browser, so the formats available depend on what your browser can open - which for HEIC in particular varies between Safari and other browsers.
Frequently asked questions
Will any frames be removed?
No. Dropping every second frame is a real way to shrink a GIF and this tool does not do it, because the result would no longer be the animation you brought - it would be a jerkier one that happens to be smaller. Frame count and per-frame timing are carried through untouched, and the result panel counts the frames out of the finished file rather than trusting the encoder's word for it.
Which setting actually makes the biggest difference?
Size, and it is not close. Measured on this encoder, halving the width and height of a 4,168 KB animation took it to 1,150 KB - about 72% gone - while cutting the palette from 256 colours to 16 at full size only reached 1,943 KB. Doing both gave 519 KB. If you need a big saving, reduce the dimensions first and only then start on the colours.
Why does this only work in some browsers?
Reading individual frames out of an animation needs the WebCodecs ImageDecoder API, which Chrome and Edge have and Safari and Firefox currently do not. Drawing an animated GIF onto a canvas gives the same frame every time, so a tool built that way would appear to work and quietly produce a still image. Rather than do that, this page says plainly that the browser cannot do it.
Can it hit a specific file size, like Discord's 256 KB?
Not as a promise, and that is deliberate. Searching for a size means encoding repeatedly, and one encode of a 60-frame animation takes about twelve seconds here - so a search would spend a minute before answering. Worse, it would often answer no: a demanding animation reduced by 88% still landed at 519 KB in testing. Turning the two dials yourself gives you the real number in one pass instead of a slow maybe.
Is the GIF uploaded anywhere?
No. Decoding, scaling and re-encoding all happen in this tab, and a content security policy the browser enforces stops this page sending anything to another domain. Nothing about the animation is recorded either - not its name, its dimensions, or how many frames it had.
Why did my result come out no smaller?
Because it was already efficient. A GIF that has been through an optimiser before, or one with few colours and large flat areas, has little left to give at its current size - re-encoding it simply reproduces what is there. The page says so when it happens rather than presenting an unchanged file as a saving. Reducing the dimensions is the lever that still works in that situation.
Related tools
- GIF MakerBuild an animated GIF from a set of images, with your own frame timing and loop setting.
- GIF Frame ExtractorPull every frame out of an animated GIF or WebP as PNG images, or build a contact sheet.
- Image CompressorCompress JPG, PNG and WebP images in your browser.
- Image ResizerResize images by width, height, percentage or exact dimensions in your browser.
Looking for something else? Browse all ImageUtility tools.