What the GIFvideo → gif, the way creatives need it
gif in confluence

Step four of your runbook should be a four-second loop

Confluence treats a GIF as an image, so it animates where it lands: no player, no click. That makes it the right format for the one interaction your numbered steps keep failing to describe, provided the file stays small and the page stays quick.

By the What the GIF team · Published

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

Put a looping how-to GIF on a Confluence page

What the GIF does the whole thing locally, right in your browser: nothing here ever leaves your machine.

  1. Record the one hard step. Use your OS recorder, or Record a Tab to grab the browser tab directly (desktop only, real time). One clean take that starts just ahead of the click.
  2. Open it in the converter. Drag the take into What the GIF. Everything from decode to encode happens inside the tab; the admin panel in the footage has no route out.
  3. Trim to the interaction. Cut to the three or four seconds where the interface responds, nudging in and out points frame by frame with the arrow keys.
  4. Crop to the panel. Lock 16:9 or 4:3 around the panel, or 1:1 around a single control. Export near the width you'll set on the page.
  5. Land under 2 MB. Set 10 to 12 fps and 64 colors and watch the projected size. Save the edit as a project file, step-named, for the next re-record.
  6. Drag it onto the page. Drag the GIF into the editor or type /image. Set the width in pixels, add alt text and a caption, publish. The same filename next time becomes a new version.

An image that happens to move, and Confluence files it as one

Confluence's own docs file GIF under images, next to JPEG, PNG, and BMP, and pitch it as a way to add some fun. The structural reading matters more: a GIF enters the page as an image, and images render in place. No play control, no decision; someone once filed a request with Atlassian just to be able to pause one. The loop is already running when the reader's eye gets there.

Attach an MP4, MOV, or AVI instead and Confluence gives it a player: a play button, and a reader who has to commit. The current editor can't even be told to autoplay one. Right for a nine-minute walkthrough. Wrong for the drag handle that only works past a threshold, where it's a gate in front of a three-second answer.

The runbook pattern is boring and it works: text carries the sequence, one short loop sits beside the step that text can't carry. One loop per hard step. Not one per step.

100 MB is the ceiling. It is nowhere near the budget.

Confluence Cloud defaults to roughly 100 MB per attachment; a site admin can move it either way in General configuration, under Attachment settings, in bytes. Data Center defaults to the same figure, as of this writing.

Every new hire, every on-call engineer at 3 a.m., every auditor with a checklist opens the page and pulls every image on it. Six loops at 8 MB is close to 50 MB per visit. Keep each under about 2 MB and the page still feels like a page. The levers, in payoff order:

The projected size in the converter updates with each dial, so you land under 2 MB before export. Still too heavy? The under-2MB recipe pushes harder, including Extra Compression, mild grain for a much smaller file.

Name the file like you're going to replace it, because you will

The panel you looped in March gets redesigned in September, and a how-to GIF of the old layout is worse than none: it teaches confidence in the wrong place. Confluence has a mechanism for this that few people use deliberately. Upload a file with the same name to the same page and it becomes a new version of that attachment; older versions stay in the attachments panel, downloadable but not restorable, so the swap is forward-only.

Name the export for the step it shows, invite-member-step4.gif, not Screen Recording 2026-09-25 at 10.14.03.gif. Save the edit as a project file so the trim, crop, and caption are waiting for the re-record. Next quarter: new capture, same project, same filename, drag it onto the page.

Then set the width in pixels rather than eyeballing the handles, add alt text so a screen reader user knows what step four does, and keep the caption short; its size and alignment are fixed.

Four times a GIF is the wrong block on this page

GIF suits a short, silent, self-explanatory interaction. Confluence has better blocks for everything else:

Your security team vetted Confluence. They didn't vet a GIF site.

The footage in a runbook is the footage least suited to a random converter: the admin console, a staging URL, a customer's record open in the CRM. Upload that to a free web tool and it now sits on someone else's disk, kept for however long their terms say, at a vendor who never went through procurement.

This converter has nothing to put in your outbound logs. The page downloads once, and from then on the video is decoded, trimmed, and encoded by the same processor that's rendering this sentence. If a capture caught a customer email, a shape overlay covers it before export and is baked into every frame. The tutorial GIF guide covers pacing a step; the Jira page handles the bug-report cousin of this workflow.

Put the loop beside the step

Record the interaction, trim it to four seconds, keep it under 2 MB, and drop it beside the instruction it explains. The admin panel in the footage gets encoded on the machine that recorded it.

Open the converter

Keep going

GIFs in Jira Ticketsgif in jira
GIFs in Notiongif in notion
Tutorial & How-To GIFshow to make a tutorial gif
Product Demo GIFsproduct demo gif
Screen Recording to GIFscreen recording to gif
GIF Under 2MBgif under 2mb

Questions, answered

Do animated GIFs play automatically on a Confluence page?
Yes. Confluence files a GIF under images, next to JPEG and PNG, so it renders in place on the published page, no player, no click. An attached video gets a player the reader has to start.
What's the attachment size limit for a GIF in Confluence?
Roughly 100 MB by default on Confluence Cloud, adjustable by a site admin under General configuration, in Attachment settings; Data Center matches as of this writing. That's a ceiling, not a target: a how-to loop under about 2 MB keeps the page quick.
How do I update a GIF on a Confluence page without re-inserting it?
Upload the new export with the same filename to the same page. Confluence stores it as a new version of that attachment; older versions stay in the attachments panel, downloadable but not restorable, so keep the old export if you might want it back.
Why is my GIF frozen in Confluence Data Center?
On Server and Data Center before 11.0, a GIF inserted at thumbnail size gets tagged as a thumbnail and renders static. Switch it to original size, or strip the thumbnail attribute in the source editor. Fixed in 11.0.
Should I use a GIF or a Loom video in Confluence?
GIF for a silent interaction under about ten seconds that should play without a click. Loom for anything you'd narrate; /loom embeds it as a player with your audio intact. Good pages use both: a loop beside the hard step, a Loom up top for the overview.
Can I attach the MP4 instead of a GIF in Confluence?
Yes. Confluence plays attached MP4, MOV, and AVI on the page, the better choice for anything long, at the cost of a play button. The converter exports silent H.264 MP4 as well as GIF, so trim once and pick whichever suits the step.