What the GIF video → gif, the way creatives need it
Made for people who present for a living

Put motion in the deck.
Keep it off the cloud.

What the GIF turns any clip into a frame-perfect animated GIF, trimmed to the exact frame, cropped to the exact ratio, right inside your browser. It cuts both ways: drop a GIF in to edit it, or export silent MP4 instead. Nothing uploads. No signup. No watermark. No "let me just check with IT."

Nothing leaves your browser Frame-perfect trim Meme text, built in Video, photos, Live Photos Done in seconds
Drop a video Why creatives swear by it
A burst of film frames, scissors and play buttons exploding out of an open laptop, the What the GIF idea, mid-detonation.
The tool. (It's the whole point.) // drop a file, it never leaves this tab  ·  see every feature →
Drop your video here
Supports MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM, GIF and more

Safari labels the next dialog “upload”, nothing actually leaves your browser.

Coming back? Drop a saved .wtg project here, together with its clips.

video.mp4
Preview
Selected clip
In 0.0s → out 0.0s 0.0s kept
Text // meme captions
No text yet. Add a caption for the classic meme look, white Impact with a black outline, or a clean brand style.
Source video
Duration –
Resolution –
Aspect –
Frame rate –
Size –
Format –
Result
Generated GIF
Size –
Dimensions –
Frames –
Settings
Frame Rate 15 fps
Scale 50%
Output Size
Width (px)
Height (px)
Clip In / Out
In (s)
Out (s)
Output Format
Animated GIF: plays anywhere an image does
MP4 Bitrate
Quality
Balanced: refined palette, fast encode, no dithering
Max Colors
Filter
Watermark
Extra Compression
Lossy LZW, the gifsicle trick: longer matches, smaller file
Loop
Repeat forever, or a set number of plays
Fade In / Out
Ease the whole edit up from, and back down to, this color
Est. frames –
Est. size –
fresh out of the oven

Boomerang bounce. Speed dials. Photos in, APNG out.

The tool grew again: per-clip speed, solid shapes and watermark, an optimizer that shrinks every GIF before you ask. The guide shows each feature working, as a looping GIF, made with the tool itself. Obviously.

See every feature
// where the gifs go

Six places a GIF beats a video

Embedded video is a liability, it stalls, it phones home, it needs a connection mid-pitch. A GIF just plays. Here's where that matters most, with a proper field guide for each.

A looping GIF playing inside a Google Slides deck on a projector.
GIFs in Google Slides Embedded video in Slides is a coin-flip. A GIF auto-plays, loops, and survives conference-room wifi. Read the guide →
A looping GIF inside a PowerPoint and Keynote slide.
PowerPoint & Keynote Same trick, different deck. Drop a looping GIF where a fussy embedded video used to choke. Read the guide →
A reaction GIF playing inside a Slack and Discord message.
Slack & Discord reactions Clip the moment, post the reaction. Two seconds of perfect comedic timing, on tap. Read the guide →
A screen-recording GIF inside a bug-tracker ticket.
Bug reports & demos Turn a screen recording into a tiny looping repro a developer will actually watch. Read the guide →
An auto-playing GIF inside a marketing email and social post.
Marketing & email Inboxes and feeds autoplay GIFs, not videos. Motion that actually shows up where it counts. Read the guide →
A filmstrip being trimmed frame by frame on a timeline.
Frame-perfect trimming Trim to the exact frame, snap to the exact ratio. The precision the name promises. Read the guide →
A creative drags a glowing GIF into a slide while an IT-security firewall looms behind, powerless, because nothing was ever uploaded.
// why this exists

Born in a pitch, not a product meeting.

We make decks for a living. And we kept hitting the same wall: the hero moment of the campaign is a video, Google Slides mangles embedded video, and the "easy" fix, some random free-video-to-gif site, wants you to upload the unreleased work to a server in who-knows-where.

That's a hard no. Not with the client's footage. Not with the thing under NDA. And definitely not the afternoon before the pitch, with IT and security watching every file that leaves the building.

So we built the tool we wished existed: it does the whole conversion inside your browser tab. Nothing uploads, nothing is stored, nothing to explain to security. Drop the clip, trim it frame-perfect, drag the GIF into the deck. Go win the room.

How It Works

Drop your video Click the box or drag a file in. Supports any format your browser can play.
Tune it Trim the clip, crop the frame, set the size, frame rate, and palette. Live size estimate.
Convert & save Click Convert. Your GIF is generated locally, no upload, and saved straight to your device.

Features

  • Convert MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM, MKV, FLV, WMV, 3GP, and OGV to animated GIF, or drop in an existing GIF and edit it
  • Photos become clips too: JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF (HEIC in Safari), pasted screenshots, Android motion photos, and Live Photo videos
  • Sequence up to 10 clips into one output, drag them into order right on the timeline
  • Per clip: frame-exact trim, split at the playhead, crop, reverse, speed from 0.25x to 4x, boomerang Bounce, rotate, and mirror
  • Up to 3 captions in meme or clean style, parked top or bottom or dragged anywhere, each with its own timing
  • Filter presets (black and white, sepia, warm, cool, invert), solid shape overlays (rectangle, circle, triangle) in any color, moved and rotated freely and stacked as many as you like, and a watermark overlay with size and opacity dials
  • Fade the whole edit up from, and back down to, any color
  • Smaller GIFs by default: identical frames merge and changed frames store only what moved, plus an Extra Compression dial that typically cuts 30 to 50 percent more
  • Loop forever, once, or a set count; export GIF, APNG, or silent MP4, plus every frame as a PNG zip
  • Undo and redo everything, save the edit as a .wtg project file, and reopen it later right where you left off
  • A size estimate measured from real sample frames, not guessed from a formula
  • 100% client-side, your video never leaves your browser

Every feature demonstrated, each with a GIF →

Pro Tips for Better GIFs

A few things that separate a good GIF from a bloated one:

  • Keep clips short. Under 4 seconds is the sweet spot, longer clips balloon in size fast because GIFs don't compress between frames the way modern video codecs do.
  • 15 fps is plenty. Most reaction GIFs and screen recordings look smooth at 12 to 15 fps. Drop to 10 for talking-head clips. Save 24+ for fast motion.
  • Crop before scaling. If the action is in one corner of the frame, crop to it. You'll get a sharper image and a smaller file at the same output size.
  • Lower the color count for solid scenes. Cartoons, screen recordings, and UI demos often look identical at 64 colors as at 256, with a third of the file size.
  • Turn on dithering for photo-realistic clips. If the source has gradients, skin tones, or sky, "High" quality + dithering hides the banding that low palettes introduce.
  • Trust the size estimate. It's measured by encoding a few real frames of your actual clip, not guessed from a formula, so it lands within a few percent. Aiming for under 2 MB (Slack inline, Twitter timeline, email)? Tweak fps and resolution until it fits, then encode once.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is What the GIF really free?
Yes. Completely free, with no signup and no watermark on your output.
Is my video uploaded to a server?
No. Everything runs locally in your browser using HTML5 canvas and a built-in GIF encoder. Your video never touches a server, which is also why conversion starts the instant you click the button, there's nothing to upload.
What video formats are supported?
MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM, MKV, FLV, WMV, 3GP, OGV, and more, any format your browser can play, which covers what phones record (iPhone and Android both). Existing GIFs load too, and so do still photos (JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC in Safari) and Android motion photos. Output is GIF, APNG, or silent MP4 on browsers with a built-in encoder.
Is there a maximum video size?
Up to about 500 MB. For very large videos, trim the clip first by setting the Start and End time before converting.
Can I crop the video?
Yes. Click "Crop Frame" on the preview, then drag to select the area you want. The output GIF is automatically sized to match the cropped region's aspect ratio so it never looks squashed.
Does it work on iPhone, iPad, or Safari?
Yes. What the GIF works in Safari on iOS and macOS, plus Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
How do I add a video clip to Google Slides?
Google Slides supports embedding YouTube and Drive videos, but in-deck playback is unreliable, slow to start, won't auto-loop properly, and requires an internet connection. The most painless workaround is to convert the clip to a GIF and insert it as an image (Insert → Image). The GIF auto-plays, loops forever, works offline, and slides advance smoothly. Same trick works in PowerPoint and Keynote.
Why does converting take a few seconds?
Because the entire encode runs in your browser. The tradeoff is privacy and zero upload time. Most clips finish in 5 to 30 seconds depending on length, resolution, and frame rate.
Can I save my work and come back to it?
Yes. "Save project" in the editor downloads a small .wtg file describing your whole edit: clip order, trims, crops, captions, fades, every setting. Drop it back onto the tool later, together with the same clip files, and the project reassembles. The clips themselves never leave your machine, so the project file carries no footage, just the recipe.
Can it fade in and out?
Yes. Under All settings, pick a fade-in and fade-out duration and a color (black by default) and the whole edit eases up from it at the start and back down at the end, in the GIF, the MP4, and the preview alike.
Can I turn photos into a GIF?
Yes. Drop in JPG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF (HEIC works in Safari) and each photo becomes a short clip you can trim, caption, and sequence with video and other GIFs. Paste a screenshot straight in with Ctrl or Cmd V. It is a slideshow maker and a video-to-GIF tool in one.
How do I turn an iPhone Live Photo or an Android motion photo into a GIF?
Android motion photos hide a real video inside the JPEG, and this tool pulls it out right in the browser, no extra steps. iPhone Live Photos work a little differently: in Photos, open the Live Photo, tap the three-dot menu, choose Save as Video, then drop that video here. The Live Photo guide walks through it with pictures.
Can it compress or optimize a GIF?
Yes, and it does it by default: identical frames merge and changed frames store only the part that moved. For more, the Extra Compression dial under All settings adds lossy compression that typically cuts another 30 to 50 percent. All local, so recompressing a sensitive GIF never uploads it.
Can it export APNG, or a boomerang?
Both. The Output Format switch offers APNG (full color, no palette) alongside GIF and MP4. For a boomerang, turn on Bounce on any clip and it plays forward then backward in one loop; combine it with the speed dial for slow-motion or snappy rebounds.
Can it compress or optimize a GIF?
Yes, and some of it happens before you ask: identical frames merge and each changed frame stores only the region that moved, which is pure savings. The Extra Compression dial (Light, Medium, Strong) adds lossy encoding that typically cuts another 30 to 50 percent for a little grain. Drop in a too-big GIF, turn the dial, watch the measured size estimate fall, and re-export, all without the file leaving your browser.
Can I turn photos into a GIF?
Yes. Drop in JPG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF (HEIC in Safari), or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V, and each photo becomes a five-second clip you can trim shorter, caption, and sequence with video and other GIFs, so a run of photos is a slideshow and one photo is a title card. Android motion photos hand over the video hiding inside them, and a Live Photo saved as video drops straight in.
Can it make a boomerang?
Yes. Turn on Bounce for any clip and it plays forward, then straight back, in one loop, the classic boomerang. It's per clip and it stacks with the speed dial (0.25x to 4x) and with reverse, so a slow-motion rebound is two clicks. The boomerang page walks through it.
Does it add a watermark?
Never. Your GIF is exactly the frames you chose, at the size and quality you chose, with no branding.
that ad down there? on purpose.

Yes, there are ads. They are the business model.

What the GIF is free, and staying that way. No accounts, no "Pro" tier, no $9/month to remove a watermark we never put on in the first place. Instead, a couple of tasteful ads keep the servers we barely use paid for.

We make ads for a living, so running a few feels like cosmic balance, making ads so we can make more ads. This one's covering your free, no-upload GIF. Carry on, you beautiful creative.

Ding! Your GIF is ready. Hot out of the browser. Hit save.