Build an animated GIF

Animate turns a sequence of still images into one animated GIF, encoded in your browser against a single 256-color palette shared by every frame. You set the frame rate from 1 to 30 fps, an optional ping-pong that plays forward then back without repeating the two end frames, extra hold time on the first and last frames, and the loop count. The preview plays through the same palette the file will use, so what is on screen is a picture of the GIF rather than of the source images.

How it works

  1. Drop the frames in order Add the images in playback order. Drag a frame in the strip, or focus one and use the arrow keys, to move it earlier or later.
  2. Set the timing Choose a frame rate between 1 and 30 fps, turn ping-pong on to play back down again, and add hold time in milliseconds to the first or last frame. GIF stores delays in hundredths of a second, so each one is rounded to the nearest 10 ms.
  3. Set the size and background The first frame's dimensions become the output size; type a different width and height to change it. The background color fills transparent pixels and any letterbox bars.
  4. Decide on dithering Turn dithering on for smoother gradients across the 256-color table, or leave it off for a smaller file. The preview updates with the palette already applied.
  5. Build and download Press "Build GIF" and watch the frame counter, then press Download once the file is written.

Questions

Can it write an animated WebP?
No. The WebP option is disabled because no browser can encode an animated WebP from a canvas — browsers display them but do not write them, and the one API that could, WebCodecs' ImageEncoder, has not shipped. Animate writes GIF.
Why does my GIF look banded, and what does dithering do?
A GIF holds one color table of at most 256 colors, so every frame is mapped onto a single palette quantised from a sample of all of them. Dithering spreads the leftover error with Floyd–Steinberg diffusion, which smooths gradients and makes the file larger.
Do all my frames have to be the same size?
Every frame of a GIF has to be the same size. If yours are not, the tool names the odd ones and offers to fit them all to the first frame — each one is then centred and letterboxed on the background color, never stretched.

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