Gifski 4+

Convert videos to quality GIFs

Sindre Sorhus

    • 4.9 • 5.5K Ratings
    • Free

Screenshots

Description

Convert videos to high-quality GIFs.

It converts videos to animated GIFs that use thousands of colors per frame. This is made possible by some fancy features for efficient cross-frame palettes and temporal dithering.

Keep in mind that Gifski is a converter, not a GIF creator. It will never support features like adding text and elements to a GIF. That's better done in a proper video editing app.


■ Features

- Video trimming
- Precise control of dimensions
- Control over GIF looping and bouncing (yo-yo) playback
- Adjust the speed
- Copy, share, or drag the GIF
- Share extension
- System service
- Optionally produce smaller lower quality GIFs
- Generate up to 50 FPS GIFs (for showing off design work on Dribbble)


■ To convert, either:

- Drag and drop your HEIC images onto the window or the Dock icon.
- Click the “Open” button in the window or in the “File” menu and then choose your HEIC images.
- Right-click your HEIC images in Finder and select this app in the “Open With” menu.

Gifski supports all the video formats that macOS supports (.mp4 or .mov with H264, HEVC, ProRes, etc). The QuickTime Animation format is not supported. Use ProRes 4444 XQ instead. It's more efficient, more widely supported, and like QuickTime Animation, it also supports alpha channel.


■ Share extension

Gifski includes a share extension that lets you share videos to Gifski. Just select Gifski from the Share menu of any macOS app.

You can share a macOS screen recording with Gifski by clicking on the thumbnail that pops up once you are done recording and selecting “Share” from there.


■ System service

Gifski includes a system service that lets you quickly convert a video to GIF from the “Services” menu in any app that provides a compatible video file.


■ Bounce (yo-yo) GIF playback

Gifski includes the option to create GIFs that bounce back and forth between forward and backward playback. This option doubles the number of frames in the GIF so the file size will double as well.


■ Tips

‣ Quickly copy or save the GIF

After converting, press Command+C to copy the GIF or Command+S to save it.

‣ Change GIF dimensions with the keyboard

In the width/height input fields in the editor view, press the arrow up/down keys to change the value by 1. Hold the Option key meanwhile to change it by 10.


■ FAQ

‣ The generated GIFs are huge!

The GIF image format is very space inefficient. It works best with short video clips. Try reducing the dimensions, FPS, or quality.

‣ Why are 60 FPS and higher not supported?

Browsers throttle frame rates above 50 FPS, playing them at 10 FPS.


■ Support

Click the “Send Feedback” button in the “Help” menu in the app or email me at sindresorhus@gmail.com

What’s New

Version 2.23.0

- The app now requires macOS 13. You can get the last macOS 12 compatible version from the app's website.

Ratings and Reviews

4.9 out of 5
5.5K Ratings

5.5K Ratings

idk-Matthew ,

Thank you!

I don't review apps or write reviews, but your app deserves it for being so simple to us and outputting really high quality GIFs. After spending all day searching for iOS or MacOS apps to convert my 4K footage to high resolution GIFS, I finally stumbled upon your app and I could not be happier. I already do all of my editing in FinalCut, but I needed something to convert my edits into GIFs. iOS apps were awful and had paid subscriptions. Websites like Giphy cushed the video quality. Your app was drag & drop, specify desired output, and then convert. For something as simple as making a GIF, the whole marker collectively lost their minds. You are wonderful and made a really great app. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

koobrik ,

Great, best I've found, needs a couple more features and small fixes

I only use this app for GIFs now because the quality is easily the best I've found. The settings you choose are not persistent, so each clip I need to process, I have to reset the framerate. The quality appears to stick most of the time. There are a few annoyances, such as when I've process and Saved As . . . why does it stay on that screen? You have to click an arrow to go back to the settings. Minor. IF I could wish for one feature, I'd just ask for a batch process window - drop in my similar files, process them all the same way, maybe pre-select a save as location. What do you think? Doable?

Developer Response ,

The quality should always be remembered. In the latest update (2.20.2), the FPS setting is now also remembered. Gifski stays on the "conversion completed" screen as we don't want to assume what the user wants. The user may want to save it multiple times to different locations. It's also unclear to me why you would want it to go back to the settings screen (?). In case you did not already know, you can drag & drop a new video onto the "conversion completed" screen to start with a new video. Batch processing is something I want to do, but it's will require larger changes to Gifski and it's not something I will have time to do in the near feature. I have to prioritize more popular requests. Email me at sindresorhus@gmail.com and I'd be happy to discuss Gifski improvements.

Bondi_Blue ,

One bug, but a great application

Gifski presents a very clean, out-of-the-way, and easy to use interface for generating high quality gifs with parameter tweaks.

I've been using it for a long time but recently noticed an issue. There is a sort of color artifact applied to gifs, of varying severity depending on the video input. One example, is that the background color of one of my video files is rgb(14, 16, 21) but is transformed to rgb(14, 17, 22) in the gif output.

This is a small shift but it is going to be noticable where you are trying to match the background of some other context so as to make a gif's background appear transparent.

Developer Response ,

The GIF format is ancient and usually limited to 256 colors, but GIfski is able to squeeze out thousands of colors. However, RGB has a lot more than thousands of colors, so Gifski is not able to perfectly match the video input. This is a limitation of the GIF format, not Gifski. Note that Gifski does support MP4 and ProRes with an alpha channel (transparency), which may be a better way of matching a certain background.

App Privacy

The developer, Sindre Sorhus, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

  • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

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