GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, a bitmap image file format that CompuServe released in June 1987 and a 1989 update made capable of looping animation. The format is best known today as the short, silent, looping reaction clips that live on Giphy, Tenor, Klipy, and the GIF keyboards inside almost every messaging and social app. It is one of the oldest pieces of computing still in everyday use, and one of the few internet conventions whose name people still argue about how to pronounce.
What does GIF stand for?
Graphics Interchange Format. The name comes from the original problem the format was built to solve. By the mid 1980s the dial-up online services (CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy) wanted to show colour pictures across a patchwork of proprietary picture formats: Apple, Commodore, IBM, Atari and the rest all had their own image standards, and none of them was small enough to download over the modem speeds of the day. CompuServe needed one interchange format that every machine could read, so it commissioned the GIF.
The engineering lead was Steve Wilhite, an American computer scientist at CompuServe; the team released the first version of the format, GIF87a, on June 15, 1987. The animation capability everyone now associates with the format arrived two years later, in a 1989 revision called GIF89a, which is still the version most files in the wild are written to. The GIF Wikipedia entry carries the full technical specification.
How the GIF format actually works
A GIF file is a sequence of bitmap frames inside one container, compressed with the Lempel-Ziv-Welch lossless algorithm. The format limits each frame to 256 colours chosen from a palette stored in the file itself, supports one colour per palette being marked transparent, and lets each frame specify a delay (in hundredths of a second) before the next one is shown.
Bitmap, not vector
Every pixel of every frame is stored directly. The format does not scale up cleanly the way SVG does; enlarging a GIF produces visible blocky artefacts, which is part of why screen-sized GIFs look fine at thumbnail size and blurry as hero images.
Palette of 256 colours per frame
Each frame can use a different 256-colour palette, which is why dithered gradients show banding (the format does not have the colour depth to render a smooth gradient) and why photographs look noticeably worse as GIFs than as JPEGs or WebPs. Cartoons, line art, simple animation, and high-contrast clips compress well; subtle colour and skin tones do not.
Lossless LZW compression
The frames are compressed without throwing data away, which keeps quality intact but means file sizes balloon quickly for long or complex clips. A 5-second 720p GIF that compresses to 6 megabytes is routine; the same 5 seconds as an MP4 might land at 300 kilobytes.
No audio, by design
The GIF specification does not include an audio track. That is the constraint the modern reaction-clip culture grew out of; the silent loop is the format's default mode, and the absence of sound is part of why GIFs work the way they do in muted chat threads and quiet office browsers.
Frame delays in hundredths of a second
Each frame specifies how long to wait before the next one shows. Most modern browsers and apps cap the minimum delay at around 20 milliseconds (50 frames per second), and many platforms will quietly slow GIFs claiming a faster frame rate down to that cap.
A short history of GIF
1987: GIF87a
CompuServe releases the first version of the format on June 15, 1987, built primarily as a way to ship colour images across the patchwork of competing computer hardware that connected to its service. The Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression makes it small enough to download over the modems of the day; the 256-colour palette is generous for the time.
1989: GIF89a, animation arrives
CompuServe ships an enhanced version with frame delays, transparency, and a few smaller additions. The frame-delay feature is what produces the looping animation everyone now associates with the format. The format does not become widely animated for years; static GIFs remain the dominant use case through the 1990s.
1991-1995: The web takes off
Tim Berners-Lee's early web browser (1991) shipped with GIF support; by 1995 the format was the dominant image format on the early web alongside JPEG. The format's transparency support made it the standard for logos, icons, and the chunky decorative animations that defined the early-90s web aesthetic.
2010s: Tumblr and reaction culture
After a decade of the format being treated as old-fashioned (JPEG and PNG took over the static-image slot, Flash and then HTML5 video took over the animation slot), Tumblr's reaction-clip culture and the rise of Giphy in 2013 turned the GIF into the standard format for short looping reaction content. The technical format mostly stayed the same; the cultural job it did changed completely.
2018-2020: The big acquisitions
Google acquired Tenor in March 2018; Meta acquired Giphy for around $400 million in May 2020. Both deals were aimed at controlling the GIF surfaces inside messaging apps. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority decided the Meta-Giphy deal would hurt competition and forced Meta to divest in 2023.
2023-2026: Ecosystem reshuffle
Meta sold Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 million in May 2023, an 87% loss; Google announced in January 2026 that it would shut down the public Tenor API on June 30, 2026, ending the API route most apps used to embed Tenor results. WhatsApp, Discord, and other affected apps are migrating to Giphy and the newer Klipy. The cultural role of the GIF is intact; the providers behind it are not.
How to pronounce GIF
Two camps, both in widespread use, both in the dictionary.
Soft g (jiff, rhymes with Jif peanut butter)
What the format's creator, Steve Wilhite, intended and said publicly. The CompuServe technical documentation noted the soft-g pronunciation in homage to the Jif peanut-butter brand. Wilhite accepted a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 with a five-word slide reading "It's pronounced 'jif' not 'gif'" and told The New York Times "the Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft g. End of story."
Hard g (giff, rhymes with gift)
What most English speakers in 2026 actually say, on the reasoning that the G stands for Graphics, that the natural phonetic reading is the hard g, and that the format was around long enough before the soft-g announcement that the hard-g version took over by usage. Linguistic studies of survey data through the 2010s and 2020s consistently put the hard-g share north of 60% of English speakers.
The honest answer
Both pronunciations are in the Oxford English Dictionary. The pragmatic answer is to use whichever the room is using and not lose any sleep over it. The Wikipedia article on the pronunciation of GIF is one of the more entertaining encyclopedia articles you will read, and the working compromise inside most teams is to call it whichever way the person who first said it that day did.
The detailed history of the argument lives in the Wikipedia article on the pronunciation of GIF and in the Webby Awards page on Steve Wilhite's 2013 speech.
Where GIFs live on social media in 2026
The GIF surface on most apps is a search-driven keyboard powered by one of a handful of providers. The providers have shuffled in the past two years, which is why the GIFs an app surfaces in 2026 are often different from the ones the same app surfaced in 2023.
Giphy
The largest catalogue of branded and editorial GIFs. Founded in 2013, acquired by Meta in 2020 for around $400 million, and sold to Shutterstock in May 2023 for $53 million after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority forced the divestment on antitrust grounds. Now the default GIF provider in many messaging and social apps, and one of the two replacement providers WhatsApp and Discord are migrating to as the Tenor API closes.
Tenor
Acquired by Google in March 2018. The Tenor GIF Keyboard is bundled with Gboard on Android and used to be the default GIF provider on WhatsApp. Google announced in January 2026 that the public Tenor API will shut down on June 30, 2026, ending the route third-party apps used to embed Tenor results. The Tenor website and the in-Gboard surface continue.
Klipy
A newer GIF, sticker, and meme provider with a Giphy and Tenor-style API. WhatsApp announced Klipy as one of its default GIF replacements for Tenor in 2025; Discord is testing it as a Tenor replacement in 2026. Catalogue is smaller than Giphy's but growing fast as the migration drives adoption.
In-app keyboards
Most messaging and social apps in 2026 expose a built-in GIF search inside the chat or comment composer (Instagram DMs, X, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, iMessage on iOS, WhatsApp). The keyboard is almost always backed by Giphy, Tenor (until June 2026), or Klipy under the hood; the results an app shows are the provider's catalogue, filtered through the platform's content rules.
Reactions and comment-section GIFs
Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, and most chat platforms now let the user respond to a post or a comment with a GIF picked from the in-app keyboard. The GIF is uploaded as the user's reply and behaves like a regular comment with embedded media, which is why a thread that mostly looks like reaction GIFs is increasingly common on every text-and-image social platform.
The platform conversion to MP4 or WebP
Most modern platforms quietly transcode an uploaded GIF into a looping MP4 (Twitter started doing this in 2014, Reddit followed, most others by the late 2010s) or a WebP. The viewer sees what looks like a GIF; the file actually delivered is a more efficient video or image format. This is why a GIF posted to social often plays smoother and is smaller in bytes than the original file on disk.
The official details on the Tenor wind-down are at the Tenor help centre FAQ; the broader background on the Giphy ownership shuffle is at TechCrunch's 2023 report on the Meta-Shutterstock divestment.
GIF vs MP4, WebP, and APNG
The GIF format is the worst of the modern animated-image formats by every technical measure except universal compatibility. The working alternatives.
MP4 (and the muted-loop trick)
An MP4 with the autoplay, muted, loop, and playsinline attributes behaves like a GIF visually (auto-play, infinite loop, no sound) at a fraction of the file size. A 5-second 720p clip that lands at 6 MB as a GIF often weighs 300 KB or less as an MP4. The trade is that some old chat and email surfaces still do not render inline MP4 the way they render GIF, which is why messaging app keyboards still send GIFs.
WebP (animated)
Google's WebP format supports animation in addition to static images, with around 25 to 35% smaller file sizes than the equivalent GIF and full alpha-channel transparency rather than the single-colour transparency GIF supports. Universally supported in modern browsers. The right format for short looping animation embedded on a website.
AVIF (animated)
A newer format with even better compression than WebP and full HDR support. Animated AVIF is still less widely supported than animated WebP across older email clients and chat apps, but the gap is closing fast. The right format for the next round of website animation work.
APNG
Animated PNG. Strictly better than GIF (24-bit colour, alpha transparency, smaller files for most content) and supported by every modern browser. Almost never used in practice because the messaging apps built their GIF keyboards on the GIF format and no widely-used animated-PNG provider ever emerged to replace them.
How to make a GIF
Four routes, from quickest to most powerful.
- Inside the messaging or social app. Instagram, Snapchat, and several others let the user capture a Boomerang or short clip and send it as a GIF directly. Discord and Slack accept GIF uploads through drag-and-drop, no extra step needed. The quickest path for any reaction GIF that lives only inside chat.
- A web converter (ezgif, Giphy, Adobe Express, Tenor). Upload a short video clip (under 15 seconds is the working ceiling), trim, set a frame rate (usually 10 to 15 fps for a small file), choose a width (480 px is plenty for most social uses), and export. ezgif.com is the long-running go-to for power users; Giphy and Adobe Express are the friendlier interfaces.
- On the phone. iPhone: Shortcuts has a Convert to GIF action that turns a Live Photo or a video into a GIF in one tap; Photos itself can convert a Live Photo to a Loop or Bounce, which functions as a GIF in most apps. Android: Google Photos has a Create > Animation option, Gboard has a built-in GIF capture, and many of the major messaging apps embed a recorder.
- On the desktop (Photoshop, ffmpeg, DaVinci Resolve). Photoshop's Save for Web (Legacy) still has the best palette and dither controls of any consumer tool. ffmpeg gives the most control of all, including custom palette generation, and is the right tool for the edge cases (specific frame rate, specific dimensions, specific file-size cap). DaVinci Resolve is the right tool when the source is footage that needs colour-grading before the GIF export.
When (and when not) to use a GIF
The format is good at a small number of jobs and bad at the rest. The working guidance.
Good: reactions in chat and comments
Short, low-stakes, conversational. A reaction GIF in a Slack thread, an Instagram DM, a Discord channel, or an X reply does the same job an emoji does at a slightly higher emotional bandwidth. The platform handles the format under the hood, the conversation gets a smile, the cost is zero.
Good: simple looping demos
A short loop showing a single product interaction (a slider, a hover state, a quick onboarding step) for an audience that may not have video autoplay turned on. The GIF will play inline in almost every chat, doc, and email surface, which is the universal-compatibility argument the format still wins on.
Bad: hero images and large website embeds
A page-loading GIF is the textbook way to wreck the Largest Contentful Paint score. The same animation as a muted-autoplay-loop MP4, or as an animated WebP, weighs a tenth of the bytes and renders smoother. The format does not belong above the fold.
Bad: photography-style content
The 256-colour palette mangles skin tones, gradients, and the kind of subtle colour shifts that make a photo look real. The same content as a JPEG (for static) or an MP4 (for motion) looks dramatically better at a smaller size. The format is built for line art, cartoons, and simple animation, not for film stills.
Bad: anything that needs audio
The GIF specification has no audio. Music, dialogue, and any clip whose joke depends on the sound is in the wrong format. The cure is an MP4 with sound (and a caption track for the mute majority) or a Reel with the audio baked into the platform's player.
Bad: critical accessibility content
GIFs do not carry alt-text well in many surfaces, and the kind of fast-flashing animation a poorly-made GIF produces can be a serious problem for users with photosensitive epilepsy. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) flag flashing content above three times per second as a known seizure trigger; a hero-sized animated GIF is one of the easier ways to ship that pattern by accident.
For the glossary entries this one connects to, the emoji entry covers the lower-bandwidth reaction format the GIF sits one tier above, the meme entry covers the broader cultural unit the reaction GIF is one expression of, the stickers entry covers the close cousin that has largely replaced the GIF in newer messaging surfaces, and the watermark entry covers the credit-attribution layer most reaction GIFs still carry from their source.
The matching tools on this site cover the working adjacent work. The social image resizer gets the static frame and aspect ratio right for the platform the GIF is heading to, the alt-text generator writes accessible captions for the loop a screen reader will otherwise skip past, and the screenshot studio produces the source frames most reaction GIFs are stitched together from.
GIF FAQ
What does GIF stand for?
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, a bitmap image format developed by a team at CompuServe led by Steve Wilhite and released on June 15, 1987. The format was built so colour images could move across the patchwork of proprietary picture formats (Apple, Commodore, IBM) on early online services, and used the Lempel-Ziv-Welch lossless compression algorithm to keep file sizes small enough for the slow modems of the day. A 1989 update, GIF89a, added the animation delay and one-colour transparency that produced the looping clips the format is now best known for.
How do you pronounce GIF?
Both pronunciations are in use and both are in the Oxford English Dictionary. Steve Wilhite, the creator, said in his 2013 Webby Lifetime Achievement Award speech that the team intended the soft g (jiff, rhyming with the American peanut butter brand Jif), and the original CompuServe technical documentation says the same. Most English speakers in 2026 still say it with a hard g (giff). The OED accepts both as standard. The pragmatic answer is to use whichever the room is using and not lose any sleep over it.
What is the difference between a GIF and a video?
A traditional GIF is a sequence of bitmap frames stored inside one file, with a per-frame palette capped at 256 colours and no audio. A video (MP4, WebM, MOV) is a compressed stream with millions of colours, audio, and a much smaller file size for the same length. Most modern social platforms now convert the GIFs uploaded to them into looping MP4s under the hood (Twitter started doing this in 2014, Reddit and Instagram followed), which is why a GIF posted to social media often plays smoother and weighs less than the original file on disk.
Are GIFs still used in 2026?
Yes, just differently from a decade ago. The format itself is rarely the file format actually delivered to a viewer (most platforms transcode to MP4 or WebP behind the scenes), but the GIF idea (a short, looping, audio-free reaction clip) is still everywhere. Giphy, Tenor, and the newer Klipy supply most of the GIFs people send through messaging apps; comment-section reactions on Instagram, X, Discord, and Slack still run on GIF search; and animated stickers and short reaction Reels have largely absorbed the cultural slot reaction GIFs used to fill.
What happened to Tenor and Giphy?
Two big ownership shifts and one shutdown to know about. Meta acquired Giphy for around $400 million in 2020 and was forced to divest by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority in 2023; Shutterstock bought Giphy for $53 million in May 2023, an 87% loss for Meta. Google acquired Tenor in March 2018, then announced in January 2026 that it would shut down the public Tenor API on June 30, 2026, ending the route most third-party apps used to pull Tenor GIFs into their interfaces. WhatsApp, Discord, and other apps that depended on the Tenor API are migrating to Giphy and the newer Klipy as replacements.
How do I make a GIF?
Three working routes. The first is upload a short video clip (under 15 seconds usually works best) to a converter like ezgif, Giphy's own GIF maker, Tenor's create tool, or Adobe Express, and download the result. The second is the in-app route on iPhone (Shortcuts can convert a Live Photo or a video to a GIF) or on Android (Google Photos has a motion option). The third is the desktop route through Photoshop's Save for Web, DaVinci Resolve, or the open-source command-line tool ffmpeg, which gives the most control over palette, frame rate, and file size.
Do GIFs hurt page speed?
Yes, on a website. A large GIF is one of the easiest ways to ruin a Largest Contentful Paint score and the slowest format for the kind of animation people want on a page. The working alternative is an MP4 with autoplay, muted, loop, and playsinline attributes (which gives a GIF-style loop with a much smaller file), or a WebP or AVIF version of the animation, which both ship the same loop in a fraction of the bytes. The actual GIF file format is best kept inside chat and social comment surfaces where the platform handles the conversion to a lighter format on the way through.