Compress GIF files

Make animated GIFs smaller with Gifsicle’s lossy compression, fewer colours, a smaller width or fewer frames. It all runs locally in your browser.

What shrinks a GIF most

  1. Width. Pixels scale with the square of the width: halving 800 px to 400 px leaves a quarter of the pixels in every frame.
  2. Lossy strength. Values of 30–80 usually add only faint grain; above 120 dithering noise becomes obvious.
  3. Frames. Fewer frames means proportionally less data, at the cost of smoothness.
  4. Colours. GIF allows at most 256 per frame; dropping to 64 helps on cartoons and screen recordings, less on video clips.

Chat apps often cap uploads (Discord’s free tier, for example, limits files). Check the current limit for your app and adjust width first. It’s the most effective lever.

Questions

How does lossy GIF compression work?

GIF stores pixels with LZW compression, which rewards long runs of identical pixels. Gifsicle’s lossy mode nudges pixel colours slightly so the runs get longer, trading a little grain for a smaller file.

Will my animation still loop?

Yes. Loop count, per-frame delays and transparency are kept. Note that “drop every second frame” removes frames but keeps each remaining frame’s delay, so the animation plays faster. Use it only when that’s acceptable.

Should I convert GIFs to video instead?

For websites, a short MP4 or WebM is usually far smaller than a GIF of the same clip. Keep GIF where video isn’t allowed, like many chat apps, email and some forums.