The GIF was supposed to be dead.
It was invented in 1987 — a year when the internet was text, floppy disks held 1.44 megabytes, and “multimedia” meant a computer that could beep in different tones. CompuServe created the Graphics Interchange Format to display simple images over painfully slow connections. It supported 256 colours and basic animation. It was a marvel of compression for its era.
Then came JPEG. Then PNG. Then video streaming. Every few years, someone declared the GIF obsolete. And every few years, the GIF refused to die.
Because the GIF does something no other format does well: it loops. Silently. Automatically. Without a play button, without a loading screen, without asking permission. It just starts. And restarts. And restarts.
That behaviour turned out to be perfect for the way the internet communicates. A reaction. An emotion. A moment. Three seconds, looping forever. The GIF became the punctuation mark of digital conversation.
In 2026, GIFs are still everywhere — messaging apps, social media, Slack channels, email signatures, documentation. And the most common way to create one is still surprisingly painful. Record a screen. Open a video editor. Trim the clip. Export as GIF. Adjust the frame rate because the file is 40MB. Reduce the resolution. Try again. It’s 12MB. Good enough.
Or: upload a video to an online GIF maker. Wait. Watch an ad. Download a GIF with a watermark. Sign up to remove the watermark. Receive marketing emails for six months.
For a file format invented in 1987, the process of creating one shouldn’t require an account, a subscription, or an upload. You have a video clip. You want a section of it to loop. The conversion is computationally trivial. It should happen on your device, instantly, and give you a file.
The GIF survived four decades because it’s simple. The tools to make them should be, too.