How to use the GIF Compressor online
A GIF stores every frame as a separate image with its own palette of up to 256 colours, so size grows with three things: the number of pixels in each frame, the number of frames per second, and how many colours each frame uses. This tool lets you turn down all three.
Width has the biggest effect, because halving it quarters the pixels. Frame rate comes next: most reaction GIFs look fine at 10 frames per second, and dropping from 25 halves the frame count or better. Reducing colours to 128 or 64 saves more on graphics than on photos, and adds some visible banding on gradients.
The GIF is re-encoded with a palette generated from the animation itself, which looks much better than a fixed web palette. Transparency is kept. The engine that does this is ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly, downloaded once when you first press Compress.
As a rule of thumb, start at 480 pixels wide, 10 frames per second and 128 colours. If the result is still too big, lower the width before the colours, because a narrower GIF looks sharper than a GIF with a starved palette. If the animation is long, trimming it to the part that matters saves more than any setting.
GIF Compressor settings explained
| Width | Keep original, 480, 320 or 240 pixels. Never enlarges a smaller GIF. |
|---|---|
| Frame rate | Keep original, 15, 10 or 8 frames per second. Speed stays the same. |
| Colours | 256, 128, 64 or 32, taken from the animation itself. |
| Dithering | An ordered pattern that hides banding when colours are reduced. |
When to compress a GIF
GIFs get compressed when a platform rejects them for size, when a page loads too slowly because of a heavy animation, or when a reaction GIF needs to fit a chat app limit. Email newsletters are another case: many email clients show animated GIFs, but large ones slow the message down, and keeping them under a megabyte or two is good practice.
Before you compress
If the GIF came from a video, it is often better to go back to the video and make the GIF again at a smaller size than to compress an already large GIF. For sharing on websites that accept video, an MP4 of the same clip is usually ten times smaller than the GIF and looks better.
How to use the GIF Compressor, step by step
- Press the Choose button or drag files onto the box. You can add several at once, and they never leave your device.
- Set width, frame rate and colours to suit where the file is going. The defaults are a good starting point.
- Press Compress. The first time, the compression engine downloads once, about 32 MB, and your browser keeps it for next time.
- Check the result next to each file: the original size, the new size and the percentage saved. If the settings would make a file bigger, you are told instead of being given a larger file.
- Press Download to save each compressed file.
What decides how small it gets
A GIF shrinks in proportion to its pixel count, its frame count and its colour count. Halving the width quarters the pixels in every frame; dropping from 20 to 10 frames per second halves the frames; halving the colours makes each frame compress a little better. Animations with large still areas, such as a logo on a plain background, compress far better than footage cut from a video.
Is it safe to compress GIFs online?
With most online tools, "online" means your file is uploaded to a company's server, processed there and kept for a while before it is deleted. Here it is not. The page downloads the converter code to your browser, and your file is read and processed inside the tab on your own device. It is never sent to TapToConvert or anyone else.
You can check this yourself: once the page and, for audio and video, the converter engine have loaded, turn off Wi-Fi and the tool still works. That also means there is no queue, no daily limit and no size cap set by a server. The only limit is the memory your browser gives a single tab.
GIF Compressor FAQ
What size should a GIF be for Discord or Slack?
Discord allows up to 10 MB for most users and Slack shows GIFs inline up to a few megabytes. A 480 pixel wide GIF at 10 fps is usually well under both.
Will the animation speed change?
No. When frames are dropped the remaining ones are shown for longer, so the animation runs at the same speed, just less smoothly.
Why does my GIF look grainy after compressing?
Reducing colours adds a dithering pattern to hide banding. Choose 256 or 128 colours for smoother results, and lower the width instead to save size.
Can I turn a GIF into a video instead?
Yes. The GIF to MP4 converter makes a video that is usually far smaller than the GIF and looks the same, and most sites that accept GIFs also accept MP4.
Are my files uploaded?
No. Compression runs inside your browser tab, so your files stay on your device and are never sent to a server.