What the GIFvideo → gif, the way creatives need it
Screen recording to GIF

Turn a screen recording into a GIF, privately

You already hit record. QuickTime, OBS, Loom, the Xbox Game Bar, whatever. Now you need the good 6 seconds as a looping GIF you can paste anywhere. Drag the file in, trim, export. The recording never leaves your tab.

Drop a video, get a GIF free · frame-perfect · nothing leaves your browser Open the converter →

Why convert a screen recording to a GIF at all

A screen recording is great for you and annoying for everyone else. It's a file to download, a player to open, a play button to find. A GIF just loops, inline, the second the page loads. No controls, no click-through, no "sign in to view". That's exactly what you want in a Slack thread, a GitHub comment, a Notion doc, or a tweet.

The catch is most online converters make you upload your recording to a server you don't control. For a cat clip, fine. For a recording of an unreleased dashboard, a customer's account, or your staging environment, that's a small problem with a big downside. What the GIF does the whole conversion inside your browser tab. The video is read locally, processed locally, and the GIF comes back without a single byte going anywhere. If privacy is the whole point, see the private GIF converter page for the long version.

It works no matter what recorded the clip

Screen recorders all spit out slightly different files, and that's fine. If your browser can play it, this can convert it. The usual suspects:

Because it's just a website, the recorder's operating system is irrelevant. A .mov off a Mac and a .mp4 off a Windows box land in the same drop zone and come out the same kind of GIF.

The trim is where a screen recording becomes a GIF

Nobody recorded exactly the moment they needed. You fumbled for the right window, clicked around, then did the thing. The fix is the frame-accurate trim timeline. Set your in and out points by dragging the handles, then nudge them a single frame at a time with the arrow keys until the loop starts and ends clean. A GIF that begins mid-motion and ends mid-motion reads as a tight loop. One that includes your mouse hunting for the menu reads as a mistake.

Aim short. Most screen demos earn their keep in 3 to 8 seconds. The longer the clip, the heavier the GIF and the more the format's color limits show. If you've got a two-minute walkthrough, that wants to stay a video. A GIF is for the one move worth looping: the toggle that breaks, the animation that's slick, the bug that reproduces.

Settings that keep UI text sharp and the file small

Screen recordings are a specific kind of footage: lots of flat color, hard edges, and small text. That's actually easy on the GIF format, but a few choices matter more than they would for a video of a person.

If you're chasing a hard byte limit (a chat app cap, a strict CMS), the small-file GIF from video page is a tuning guide. If legibility is king and size is no object, high-quality video to GIF goes the other direction.

Where these GIFs end up

The reason a screen recording becomes a GIF is almost always that it's going somewhere a video would be awkward. Product demos in a launch post. A repro clip in an issue. A before-and-after in a design review. A how-to step inside docs. The format autoplays and loops in all of those, with no embed and no player chrome.

For the polished versions of those use cases, there are guides for product demo GIFs and tutorial and how-to GIFs, plus a placement guide for GIFs in a GitHub README if your screen recording is destined to be the hero animation at the top of a repo. Same converter, same private workflow, just aimed at a specific destination.

Got the recording? Make the GIF.

Drag your QuickTime, OBS, Loom, or Game Bar file into the converter. Trim to the good part, tune the colors, export. It all happens in your browser, so the recording never leaves your machine.

Open the converter

Keep going

Loom to GIFloom to gif
Private GIF Converterprivate offline gif converter
Video to GIFvideo to gif

Questions, answered

Does my screen recording get uploaded anywhere?
No. The entire conversion happens inside your browser tab. Your recording is read and processed locally, and nothing is ever sent to a server. That's the whole point for footage of internal demos, staging environments, or anything under NDA: the file only lives on your machine and in the GIF you choose to share. It even works offline once the page has loaded.
Can it record my screen for me?
No, and on purpose. You bring an already-recorded file. Use your operating system's built-in recorder (QuickTime, the Xbox Game Bar, the ChromeOS recorder) or a tool like OBS or Loom, then convert the result here. Keeping capture and conversion separate is what lets the conversion stay fully in your browser.
My UI text looks blurry in the GIF. How do I fix it?
Two moves. First, raise the color count: 128 to 256 colors keeps labels, code, and small text legible, where a low palette smears them. Second, crop to the panel that matters before you scale down, so the important pixels stay at a readable size instead of being shrunk along with the whole screen.
What's the ideal length for a screen recording GIF?
Short. Most screen demos work best at 3 to 8 seconds. GIFs get heavy fast as they get longer, and the format's color limits start to show. If you've got a long walkthrough, keep it as a video and convert only the one segment worth looping.
It says my recording is a .mov or .mkv. Is that a problem?
Not at all. If your browser can decode it, the converter can handle it: .mov, .mp4, .webm, .mkv, .avi, .m4v, and more all work. QuickTime's .mov and OBS's .mkv both drop straight in with no conversion step beforehand.
Is there a watermark or a sign-up?
Neither. No account, no email, no install, and nothing stamped on your GIF. It's free and ad-supported. Drag a file in and export, that's the whole flow.