1. Pick the moment
The best GIFs show one action: a reaction, a trick, a UI interaction. Two to four seconds is usually enough. Leave out the lead-up; people watching a loop see it three or four times, so a short clip still gets its point across.
2. Frame it
Crop away anything that isn't the subject. Square (1:1) and 4:5 fill more of a phone feed than 16:9. Then choose a width: 480 px is the everyday default, 320 px when you're fighting a size limit, 640 px for demos with small text.
3. Choose a frame rate
Video is usually 24, 30 or 60 fps. A GIF rarely needs more than 12: every frame you drop is a frame you don't store. For fast action use 20 or 25. There's a quirk in how GIFs store time, below.
Frame timing: why 15 fps isn't quite 15 fps in a GIF
One second of animation, frame by frame, using the delays below.
Stored delays add up to 100 cs → plays at 15.00 fps. Delays alternate, so motion has a slight, regular stutter.
The GIF89a specification stores each frame's delay as a whole number of centiseconds. 100 divides evenly by 10, 20, 25 and 50 fps, but not by 15 or 30. Untick the box to see naive rounding: 30 fps becomes a delay of 3 cs, which is really 33.3 fps, so the GIF runs fast. Above 50 fps you would need delays under 2 cs, and browsers slow those frames down to around 10 cs instead, which is why very high-fps GIFs look sluggish.
4. Colours and dithering
Each GIF frame can use at most 256 colours. The converter picks the best palette for your clip. Dithering (a fine dot pattern) hides banding in skies and skin; turn it off for screen recordings with flat colours. Try the palette lab to see the difference.
5. Add text if it needs it
A caption turns a clip into a reaction. Keep it under about 40 characters so it reads in one pass. Captions and watermarks.
6. Loop it
Forward loops work when the start and end match. Otherwise a boomerang hides the seam by playing back and forth.
7. Hit the size target
Every platform has a limit (Discord's free tier is 10 MB; X allows 5 MB from its mobile apps). The fastest way down is almost always width, because it shrinks both dimensions at once:
Pixel budget: which knob actually shrinks a GIF?
1.00×
480×270 px × 48 frames = 6.2 million pixels, about 24 MB uncompressed in memory while encoding, relative to a 480 px, 12 fps, 4 s clip.
Width counts twice, because height follows it: going from 480 to 240 px leaves a quarter of the pixels. Frame rate and length each scale linearly. Real GIF size tracks this pixel count loosely; detail and motion decide the rest, which is why the converter measures instead of guessing.
The converter's size meter runs a real trial encode on sample frames, so you see the effect of each change before you export. Full list of platform limits, with dates.
Questions
What frame rate should a GIF be?
10 to 12 fps suits most clips and keeps files small. Use 20 or 25 fps for fast motion; both divide evenly into GIF's centisecond timing. Avoid going above 50 fps, which browsers slow down.
How long should a GIF be?
Two to six seconds. GIPHY caps uploads at 15 seconds and recommends 6 or less, and shorter loops are easier to watch.
What size should a GIF be?
480 px wide for chats and social, 320 px when a size limit is tight, 640 px for product demos with small text, and 128 px square for Slack or Discord emoji.
Can I make a GIF on my phone?
Yes. Open the converter in your phone browser, pick a clip from your camera roll, and export. Keep the width modest; phones have less memory for frames.