- Is my GIF uploaded anywhere?
- No. The page loads a small piece of code into your browser, and that code decodes the GIF, rebuilds its colors, and writes a new GIF on your own device, in a background thread so the page stays responsive. Open your browser's network tab while it runs and you won't see the file go anywhere. That's also why there's no upload wait, no queue, and no daily limit on how many GIFs you can compress.
- What do Light, Balanced, and Strong actually change?
- All three start with the same lossless trick: any pixel that's identical to the previous frame is left out, and each frame is cropped to the area that changed. For a GIF with a still background, that alone can cut the size a lot. Light stops there and keeps every color, so the result looks exactly like the original. Balanced also limits each frame to 128 colors, which is hard to tell apart from 256 on most clips. Strong limits frames to 48 colors and drops every other frame, adding the dropped frame's time to the one before it, so the GIF still plays for the same length, just a little less smoothly. None of the levels add dithering, the speckle pattern some tools use to fake extra colors, because it makes files bigger.
- How does Fit a size work?
- Pick a target, from 256 KB to 10 MB, and the tool works through six steps in order: Light, Balanced, Strong, Strong at 32 colors, then 75% of the original width and height, then 50%. It stops at the first result that fits under your target, so you get the least change that does the job. If even the 50% step is still too big, you get the smallest version it made, with the download enabled, and a note saying how far over it is. At that point a shorter clip is the fix: cutting the length in half roughly halves the file.
- Why does it say my GIF is already tight?
- Because our version came out the same size or bigger, and we won't hand you a bigger file. This happens with GIFs that were already optimized when they were exported, and with tiny GIFs where there's nothing left to trim. If you picked Light, try Balanced or Strong: those change the colors, so they can still find savings in a GIF that's tight on the lossless side.
- Will the speed, loop, or transparency change?
- No. Every frame keeps its delay, so the animation plays at the same speed, and on Strong the total play time stays the same because dropped frames give their time to the frame before. A GIF that loops forever still loops forever, and one that plays once still plays once. Transparent areas stay transparent. The tool also handles the less common ways GIFs are built, like frames that clear themselves before the next one draws, frames that restore what was underneath, and interlaced frames.
- Why are GIFs so big in the first place?
- GIF is a format from 1987. Each frame is stored as a full picture with at most 256 colors, compressed with a simple method that works well on flat areas and badly on noise. A GIF cut from a video is close to the worst case: film grain and gradients change nearly every pixel on every frame, so there's little to compress. That's why the size often drops the most on Strong, where there are half as many frames and far fewer colors. Clips with flat colors, like screen recordings, stickers, and animations, usually shrink well even on Light.
- What's the biggest GIF it can handle?
- Up to 50 MB, 4096 × 4096 pixels, and 2,000 frames. The tool only keeps a few frames in memory at a time, but a large canvas still needs room: one 4096 × 4096 frame is about 64 MB of pixels, and your browser holds a few of those while it works. On a phone or an older laptop, a big GIF can run out of memory. If that happens you'll get a message saying so, and closing other tabs or trying a shorter clip usually fixes it.
- Which level should I start with?
- Start with Balanced, the default. It's the best trade between size and quality for most GIFs, and it runs as soon as you drop the file. If you have an upload limit to hit, skip the guessing and use Fit a size with that limit as the target. Use Light when the colors must stay exact, like a logo or pixel art, and Strong when size matters more than smoothness.
