Rescreen / Free tools / WebM to GIF

WebM to GIF converter

Drop a WebM here and it becomes a looping GIF in your browser, sharp on screens, in 256 colours.

Drop a WebM file here

or choose one from your device

Up to 2.0 GB. Stays on your device.

How to convert WebM to GIF

Three steps, all on this page.

Choose your WebM
Choose or drop a WebM file. The page reads what is inside and checks that this browser can convert it before anything starts.
Convert to GIF
Pick the options you want, then press Convert to GIF. Tracks that a GIF can hold as they are get copied, which is near instant.
Check and download
The new file is opened again and checked against the original before it is offered. Play it in the preview, then download it.

What changes from WebM to GIF

WebM is a web format based on Matroska. Its video is VP8 or VP9 (AV1 is also used), with Vorbis or Opus sound. Source
A Chromebook’s screen recorder saves Record video as a .webm file in the Downloads folder. For part of the screen it also offers Record GIF, which saves a .gif with no sound and no camera. Source
Each GIF pixel is an index into a palette of at most 256 colours, so photographic pictures are approximated, often with dithering. Source
GitHub takes GIFs up to 10 MB in issues, pull requests and comments, and .webm, .mp4 and .mov videos up to 10 MB on a free plan or 100 MB on a paid one. Source
In Google’s example, a 3.7 MB animated GIF was 341 KB as a WebM: about a tenth of the size. Source
The Gifski Mac app opens only the video formats macOS supports, which do not include WebM; its FAQ suggests converting to MP4 first. Source
The gifski command-line tool reads video piped from ffmpeg (-f yuv4mpegpipe) and uses thousands of colours per frame, with palettes shared across frames. Source

WebM file

WebM

PictureVP8, VP9 or AV1
SoundOpus or Vorbis

GIF file

GIF

Picture256-colour frames, looping
Soundnone

Who converts WebM to GIF

Mostly people whose recorder saved WebM: a Chromebook’s built-in screen recorder, a screen or webcam recorder running in a browser tab, or a browser extension. The recording usually shows something short, such as a bug, a setting being changed or a step in a class assignment, and the place it is going wants an image that plays by itself: a GitHub issue or README, a help article, a Google Doc, an email, a forum post, or a chat app that shows a WebM as a file to download. Some are simply holding a short WebM clip from a website and want it as a GIF to share.

Where your WebM came from, and why that helps

WebM is the format the web records in. A Chromebook saves every video screen recording as WebM, and screen, webcam and meeting recorders that run in Chrome, Edge or Firefox mostly do the same, because it is what those browsers record with no extra software. The video inside is VP8 or VP9, and every current browser can decode both, so this page reads any of these recordings in Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, including on a school or work Chromebook where nothing can be installed.

Recordings made in a browser are written as they happen, so many of them do not state their own length and have no index for jumping to a point in the middle. The converter measures the length from the frames themselves before it starts, so the start and end boxes work on these files too.

Good settings for a screen recording

For a recording of a screen, 640 pixels wide at 10 frames a second is a sensible start: menus, buttons and normal-sized text stay readable, and clicks look like clicks. Go up to 800 or 960 when the reader must make out small text, such as code or a spreadsheet. The default here, 480 pixels, suits a small loop in a chat or a document.

More frames a second makes scrolling and dragging smoother but rarely matters for clicks and typing; 12 or 15 is the most a screen recording needs. A GIF can be up to 30 seconds long and 1,280 pixels wide on this page, but most good ones are under 10 seconds. Set the start and end so it begins just before the thing you are showing and stops just after it.

How big the GIF comes out

We recorded two 21-second clips in a Chromium browser, which saved them as 1280×800 VP9 WebM, as browser recorders do, and converted the whole of each on this page. One scrolls through three long web pages, close to the worst case for a GIF because nearly every pixel moves. The other types a bug report into a form and clicks Save, which is what most screen GIFs look like.

Width and frame rate	Scrolling: GIF size	Time	Typing: GIF size	Time
480 px, 10 fps	0.92 MB	0.9 s	72 KB	0.6 s
640 px, 10 fps	1.4 MB	1.2 s	99 KB	0.8 s
640 px, 15 fps	1.5 MB	1.7 s	113 KB	1.1 s
800 px, 12 fps	2.2 MB	1.8 s	134 KB	1.2 s
960 px, 10 fps	2.8 MB	2.1 s	152 KB	1.3 s

Both clips whole (21.4 s): the scrolling one is a 5.9 MB WebM, the typing one 254 KB. Converted in Chrome 155 on an M1 MacBook Pro; the time is how long each conversion took.

Why the GIF can be smaller than the WebM

The scrolling clip shrank from 5.9 MB to under 1 MB at 480 pixels, and the typing one from 254 KB to 72 KB. That is not because GIF compresses better: it compresses far worse. The GIF is smaller because it is narrower than the 1280-pixel recording and keeps 10 frames a second out of 25. This page also redraws only the pixels that changed since the last frame, and on a screen that is usually a cursor, a line of text or a menu.

At the same width and frame rate, a WebM is many times smaller than a GIF. A webcam recording, a video of a game or anything else where the whole picture moves makes a GIF several megabytes for a few seconds, and there the WebM or an MP4 is the better file to send.

What 256 colours does to a recording

Every frame of a GIF can use 256 colours at most. This page picks a fresh palette for each frame, so a screen of text, icons and flat buttons keeps sharp edges and true colours. A face on a webcam, a photo on a web page, a gradient background or a blurred shadow needs more colours than that, and comes out banded or speckled with dithering.

If your recording has the camera bubble on, or shows photos or video, expect that part to look rough. Turning the camera off before recording, or cutting the GIF to the part without it, keeps the result clean.

On a Chromebook: record a GIF to begin with

ChromeOS can save a GIF directly. Open Screen capture (Ctrl + Shift + Show windows), choose Screen record and partial, drag a box over the area, then choose Record GIF instead of Record video. That saves a GIF to Downloads with no WebM step, and with no sound or camera. Our guide to screen recording on a Chromebook covers the controls.

Use this page instead when the recording already exists as a WebM, when you recorded the whole screen, or when you want to choose the width and frame rate or cut a few seconds from a longer take.

When not to convert

Do not turn a long recording, a lesson or anything with speech into a GIF. A GIF has no sound, cannot be paused or scrubbed by most viewers, and past 20 or 30 seconds becomes too big to send. Share the WebM, or make it an MP4 with the WebM to MP4 converter if the other side cannot play WebM.

A GIF cannot add detail. If the recording is blurry, the GIF will be too, and a GIF wider than the recording only makes it bigger, so this page never makes one wider than the video. Keep the WebM: colours cut down to 256 do not come back, so make a fresh GIF from the original whenever you need other settings.

Other ways to convert WebM to GIF

ffmpeg Any computer, from the command line

Install ffmpeg from ffmpeg.org (on a Mac with Homebrew: brew install ffmpeg).
Run ffmpeg -ss 3 -t 6 -i recording.webm -vf "fps=10,scale=640:-1:flags=lanczos,split[a][b];[a]palettegen[p];[b][p]paletteuse" -loop 0 recording.gif for six seconds from 0:03, 640 pixels wide, at 10 frames a second.

Reads every kind of WebM. The palettegen and paletteuse pair builds one palette from the clip itself; leave it out and the GIF looks grainy. The right choice for many files at once.

gifski (command line) Mac, Windows and Linux

Install gifski and ffmpeg (on a Mac: brew install gifski ffmpeg).
Run ffmpeg -i recording.webm -f yuv4mpegpipe - | gifski --fps 10 --width 640 -o recording.gif -.

Gives the best colours of any of these, with thousands per frame, so camera footage looks noticeably better, in a larger file. The Gifski Mac app cannot open WebM, so on a Mac use the command line or make an MP4 first.

Video to GIF maker Any browser

Open the video to GIF maker and drop the WebM on it.
Play it, set the start and end at the playhead, and drag a box over the part of the screen you want.
Choose the width, frame rate, colours and how many times it plays, then download the GIF.

Also free and in your browser. It adds cropping, which a full-screen recording often needs, plus fewer colours and a play count.

Frequently asked questions

How do I convert a WebM to a GIF without losing quality?

Some loss cannot be avoided, because a GIF holds at most 256 colours a frame. Keep it close by matching the GIF to the recording: 800 or 960 pixels wide for small text, 12 to 15 frames a second for scrolling, and only the seconds you need. Screen recordings lose little; camera footage loses the most, and gifski’s command line keeps it best.

How do I make a GIF smaller?

Cut it shorter first, then make it narrower; each halving of the width makes it roughly half to a quarter the size. Lowering the frame rate below 10 saves less and makes it jumpy. Our 21-second scrolling clip went from 2.8 MB at 960 pixels to 0.92 MB at 480.

How do I convert a WebM to a GIF on a Chromebook?

Open this page in Chrome on the Chromebook, drop the recording from your Downloads folder on the converter, set the start, end, width and frame rate, and choose Convert to GIF. The GIF goes to Downloads. Next time, you can also pick Record GIF in Screen capture to skip the WebM.

Can I convert a WebM to a GIF with Gifski on a Mac?

Not in the Gifski app: it opens only what macOS can play, and macOS does not play WebM. Use the gifski command line with ffmpeg (above), convert here, or make an MP4 with the WebM to MP4 converter and drop that on Gifski.

Does the GIF keep the sound?

No. A GIF has nowhere to put sound, so it is left out. If the sound matters, share the WebM or an MP4 instead.

Is this WebM to GIF converter free, and is the file uploaded?

It is free, with no sign-up, watermark or limit on files, and the WebM never leaves your computer: the GIF is made in your browser and saved to your downloads.

Is my file uploaded?

No. Your WebM is read, converted and checked on your own computer, so there is no upload and no queue. In Chrome and Edge on a computer files of any size work, written straight to a file you choose; in other browsers, files up to 2.0 GB. We count anonymous page views and whether a conversion worked; when one fails, the event also carries the step, your browser’s error and the file’s codecs, size and length in broad bands, never the file or its name. If a conversion fails you can choose to send us the file, which is deleted within 30 days. See the privacy policy.

Spend less time editing
your next recording.

Create an account and record your first video in your browser.

No credit card required