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Rescreen / Free tools / Video to GIF

Video to GIF converter

Make a GIF from a short part of a video or screen recording: pick the seconds you want, crop to the part of the screen that matters, choose the size, frame rate and looping, and download it. Everything happens in your browser: the video is never uploaded. No account, no watermark.

Make a GIF

Drop a video here

or choose one from your device

MP4, MOV or WebM. Up to 30 seconds of it becomes the GIF. Stays on your device.

How to make a GIF from a video

From a screen recording to a short, silent loop you can drop into docs.

  1. Choose a video

    Choose or drop a video. MP4, MOV and WebM all work, including screen recordings from a Mac, Windows or a browser recorder. The page checks that this browser can decode it before anything else.

  2. Pick the part you want

    Pick the part you want. Play the preview and press Start at playhead and End at playhead, or type the seconds. Up to 30 seconds.

  3. Crop to what matters

    Crop if you only need part of the screen: pick a shape, or trim pixels off each edge. The box on the preview shows what will be kept.

  4. Set size, speed and looping

    Choose the width, frame rate, colours and whether it loops. The line under the settings shows how many frames that makes.

  5. Make and download

    Press Make GIF. When it is done the page reads the GIF back to check its size, length and looping, shows it, and gives you Download GIF.

Choosing the settings for a software demo

A GIF stores every frame as a picture with at most 256 colours, and has no sound. That suits a short, silent loop of something happening on screen: a button being clicked, a menu opening, a setting changing. For a readable software demo:

  • Crop first. Cropping to the window or panel that matters does more for legibility than any other setting, because the text keeps its size at a smaller width.
  • Width: 640 or 800 pixels is enough for most docs pages and READMEs. Go wider only if the text cannot be read otherwise.
  • Frame rate: 8–12 fps is smooth enough for clicks and typing. Higher rates matter for fast cursor movement and scrolling, and make the file bigger.
  • Colours: keep 256 for interfaces. Fewer colours shrink the file but band gradients, photos and shadows.

The converter only redraws the pixels that changed from one frame to the next, and lets the rest of the picture show through. Where the screen is still, it does not store a new frame at all; the last one just stays up longer. That is why a screen recording usually makes a much smaller GIF than camera footage of the same length and size.

Worked example

A 1920×1080 screen recording of someone switching on a setting. The useful part is between 12.0 and 18.0 seconds, and only the settings panel on the right matters. Set start to 12 and end to 18, trim 900 pixels from the left, leave the width at 640 and the frame rate at 10. The summary reads 60 frames · 640×678 · 6.0 s · loops forever. The GIF plays for exactly six seconds; frames where nothing moved are folded into the one before, so it holds fewer frames than that.

We do not promise a file size before the GIF is made, because it depends on how much of the picture changes. You see the real size on the download button, and if it is too big for where it is going, lower the width or frame rate and make it again — the video is still loaded.

Which browsers it works in

The page reads frames with WebCodecs, the browser’s built-in video decoder, and writes the GIF with a small open-source encoder in JavaScript (gifenc, MIT licence) that is part of the page. We have tested it in a Chromium-based browser (the engine behind Chrome and Edge) on a Mac, at desktop and phone screen widths, with H.264 MP4, VP9 and AV1 WebM files, a browser screen recording and files with and without sound. Safari and Firefox also have WebCodecs, but we have not tested them yet. Which video formats can be read depends on the browser: if it cannot decode a file, the page says so before you start.

Limitations

  • Up to 30 seconds per GIF and 1280 pixels wide. The page also refuses a mix of length, size and frame rate that would be too much for a browser to build, and stops if the GIF passes 150 MB.
  • No sound: GIF cannot hold audio. If you need sound, share the video itself.
  • 256 colours per frame. Interfaces look clean; photos, faces and gradients show some banding.
  • Frame rates up to 25 fps. GIF timing is in hundredths of a second and browsers slow down anything faster than 50 fps, so the frame delays alternate slightly (7, 6, 7 hundredths at 15 fps) to keep the total length exact.
  • The GIF is built in your browser’s memory. A phone may run out of memory on a large one before the limits above.

Is my video uploaded?

No. The video is read and the GIF made inside this page, and neither is sent anywhere. We count anonymous page views and whether a GIF was started, finished, downloaded or failed, and why it failed from a fixed list of reasons; those events never include the video, its name, its size or your settings. See the privacy policy.

Frequently asked questions

Recording the walkthrough first? Read how to make a tutorial video. Have a WebM that will not play? The WebM to MP4 converter fixes that.

How do I turn a screen recording into a GIF?

Drop the recording here, pick the few seconds that show the action, crop to the window you need and press Make GIF. Mac recordings (.mov), Windows recordings (.mp4) and browser recordings (.webm) all work.

Why is my GIF so big?

GIF compression is far weaker than a video codec’s. Size grows with width × height × frames, and with how much of the picture changes. Crop tighter, lower the width, lower the frame rate or shorten the clip, roughly in that order.

Does the GIF loop?

By default it loops forever. You can set it to play once, or a set number of times; the page checks the finished file says the same.

Is there a watermark or a limit on how many I make?

No watermark, no account, no limit on how many. The only limits are the clip length and size above.

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