How to Use Facebook’s Built-In GIF Tool
GIF files are short, repeating images often taken from video clips. They can also be homemade animations or just sparkly moving images. Facebook has its own built-in GIF tool that you can use to search for and easily insert GIFs into both your status updates and comment sections.
Using GIF in Facebook Comments
Inserting GIFs into comments on your friends’ posts is just as easy as inserting them into your own status updates — and you can do it both from the web and the app too. All you need to do is look for the GIF icon beside the comment field and then follow steps three and four above. On the app, tap What’s on your mind (inside the field) and then select GIF.
Where to Find More GIFs to Manually Post on Facebook
Facebook also allows GIF posting by manual sharing or upload. This can be useful when you have a specific GIF you want to share that you can’t seem to find in Facebook’s built-in GIF tool. There are lots of places to search for GIFs. Downloading (and sometimes making) them is easy. GIPHY is one of the best places you can look for trending GIFs and GIFs in categories like entertainment, sports, holidays, memes, etc. It’s currently known as the web’s largest and most popular GIG search engine. Imgur is known for their GIF images, too, and plenty of them are ones that you can download straight from their app or website. You can browse for images by tags like funny, summer, uplifting, food, virtual reality, memes, and lots of others. Once you’ve downloaded a GIF you want to share on Facebook, you can upload it by selecting the camera icon in any status update or comment, just like if you were uploading a regular image file.
Make Your Own GIF
Another way to get yourself a great GIF to share with Facebook friends is by making your own, which is ideal for those times when you’re quoting a specific clip from a video. You can turn videos into GIFs, as well as make them from scratch, online or through programs like GIMP or Photoshop.
Upload Your GIF
Once you’ve downloaded a GIF you want to share on Facebook, you can upload it by selecting the camera icon in any status update or comment field, just like if you were uploading a regular image file. If all you have is the URL to a GIF (i.e., it’s not downloaded to your device), you can still post it as part of your Facebook status by pasting the link into the status box. Depending on the site it’s hosted on, Facebook should recognize that it’s a GIF image and automatically insert it into your status update or comment. You can then build your status normally, and even erase the GIF link, and the image will still post. If you can’t seem to upload the GIF to Facebook and make it display correctly, another option you might want to try is saving the GIF to an image hosting site and then sharing the link on Facebook. Just upload your GIF to one of those websites, copy the link, and paste it in Facebook to instantly share the image.
