How to Compress a GIF
Our app has an incredibly simple and user-friendly interface, making it easy to understand how to compress GIF and master the app in little to no time.
Here’s a brief instruction on how to compress a GIF online:
1. Open Watermarkly’s compressing tool.
2. Add the files you want to process. You can do this in several ways: import your GIFs from a folder on your device, drag and drop the desired images into the app’s window, or upload files from a cloud storage. The latter is quite convenient if you don’t store images on your device to save up some space.
3. Choose one of the three GIF compression options. Please note that this choice will affect the image quality. 
- Better quality. Choose this option if you need to keep the image quality as good as possible. If you compare the original and the processed copy after compression, you will barely notice any difference.
- Smaller size. This option is ideal for you if image quality isn’t crucial, and you need to decrease the file size as much as possible.
- Specific file size. Here, you can enter the exact file size of your compressed GIF image.
4. Click the "Compress Images" button. Once you do that, the compression process will start automatically. You won’t need to do anything else.
5. Download your compressed file. You can export your processed file to your device or directly to a cloud storage. Once you do that, you’ll be able to check out the new file size and image quality.
If you have any questions regarding the app and how to compress GIF using it, you can contact our support team. Enter your name along with your email address, then write your question or describe your issue. Lastly, send your message.
About the GIF Format
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a file format that can display animation; although, unlike videos, it doesn’t have any sound. Here are several key features of this format:
- Animations. One of the primary uses of the GIF format is for short, looped animations. GIF files can contain multiple images that are shown in rapid succession, creating the illusion of motion.
- Limited Color Palette. GIF has a limited number of colors it can display – it supports only 256 colors. This limitation makes GIF somewhat less suitable for images with a rich color palette; unlike JPEG, for instance.
- Lossless Compression. You can compress a GIF losslessly, which means GIF files can be compressed without any loss of data; therefore, you’ll be able to easily decompress them without any issues. However, lossless compression produces files of a bigger size than lossy compression. Thus, it’s not a great choice if you need to compress your images as much as possible.
- Transparency. GIF supports transparency, allowing one color in the image to be fully transparent. This is useful if, for example, you need to create images with transparent backgrounds.
- Supports Animated Text Overlays. GIF can include text captions, which is great if you want to attract some attention with your images on social media.
- Interlacing Support. The GIF format can use interlacing, meaning that the image gradually loads onto the screen, starting with a rough depiction, then more and more details appear.
- Wide Compatibility. GIF files are widely supported by various software, apps and web browsers, which is why they are commonly used for sharing animated images on the internet.
The GIF format is mostly used for memes or reactions; it’s highly popular on social media platforms like Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook. All thanks to its convenience and the fact that it produces files that are smaller in size than videos.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the GIF Format
Now that you know how to compress GIFs, let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of this format and understand why it’s so common. One key feature of the GIF format, and its main advantage over the years, is the ability to display animations. All modern web browsers currently support GIF animations, which is why GIFs are so widely used on the Internet. However, similar formats such as APNG, WebP, and JPEG XR are slowly growing in popularity, too. So, GIF might have some competitors.
Advantages of the GIF Format
The main feature of the GIF format is its ability to display looped animations. It’s quite common to react with a GIF in comments or direct messages. Some social media platforms even allow to use GIFs as profile pictures. You’ve definitely come across some GIFs before – it’s impossible not to.
Image compression in the GIF format happens using a palette of 256 colors. The remaining colors are generated by blending adjacent pixels from the primary palette. The image quality is maintained as much as possible.
This format also supports an uncomplicated method of creating transparency in images. Consequently, one of the 256 colors in a file is designated as transparent, allowing the background of a web page to show through it.
Disadvantages of the GIF Format
The drawbacks of the GIF format include:
- Impossibility of working correctly with images that have a rich color palette.
- Only two types of transparency are supported — completely transparent or completely opaque. It’s not possible to create gradual transparency.
- Lack of support for vector graphics, and the use of animation significantly increases the file size.
- The GIF format doesn’t handle images with multiple layers well.
- GIF doesn’t support EXIF at all; so, if you have any metadata in your images, all of them will be lost.
- Without an ICC color profile, effective color management is not possible.
- The transparent GIF format is outdated, and the use of lossless compression often results in large-sized files.
Taking all of this into account, the GIF format lags behind its competitors, and in the near future, its use on websites will most likely become impractical.
Currently, the main advantage of the GIF format is the ability to create animations with full transparency. However, limitations in color depth and insufficient compression efficiency significantly restrict its potential. In many cases, it is preferable to use the vector format SVG for animated images.
Why You Should Use Watermarkly to Compress GIF
There are several reasons why you should compress GIF animations with our free Watermarkly app. Here are some key advantages that make this tool worth using:
- Unlimited Use. With our online GIF compressor you can reduce image file size of your GIFs as many times as needed.
- Fast Processing. Our efficient processing system imports GIF files in a matter of minutes, regardless of their original size.
- Security. All files uploaded by you are never sent to our servers. We never get access to your files.
- Batch Compression. With this GIF compressing tool, you can easily reduce the size of multiple GIF files and export them to your device or a cloud storage.
- User-Friendly. Even if you’ve never worked with an image editing app before, you’ll be able to compress your GIFs without spending much effort and time.
Our website offers other online tools for image editing. Here you can also make use of:
- Watermarking App. Adding watermarks serves several purposes. Mainly, by watermarking your images you can protect them from unauthorized use. Another purpose is to promote your brand by adding a logo to visual content that you post on social media.
- Image Cropping. Whether you need to remove unnecessary parts of a photo or crop image into a circle, square, or rectangle, our tool allows you to easily do all of that online.
- Blurring Faces and License Plates. If people or license plates are visible in your animation, and you want to cover them, you can easily do it online without downloading any special software.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below you will find the most frequently asked questions about our app and the GIF compression process along with answers to them.
On which devices can I compress a GIF file?
You can work on any device since Watermarkly is an online app to compress GIF for free, and there is no need to download anything. Simply open your browser, go to our website, choose the desired tool, namely GIF compressing tool, upload your file, set the compression settings and start the processing.
Can I compress a GIF file on my smartphone and how can I do it?
Yes, you can compress GIFs for free on a smartphone regardless of its operating system. All the work is done in a browser; all you need is the file you want to process and stable internet access.
Is GIF compression free of charge?
Yes, you can compress GIF files absolutely for free.
Can I compress multiple GIF files at the same time?
Yes, simply upload all the GIF files you want to compress into the app, set the compression settings, and start the process. Once the compression is done, you can download all processed files or export them to a cloud storage.