From converting a portion of a YouTube video into an animated image to putting your own face in any popular GIF, these apps are must-haves for anyone who likes GIFs.
GIFs are the language of the internet, used for reactions, quick explanations, or even art. They're a part of mobile keyboards and several instant messaging or social media apps. And there are websites dedicated to collecting GIFs that you can search, like Giphy and Gfycat.
If you want to create or share your own GIF, these tools for the web and mobile make it easier than ever before.
1. Morphin (Android, iOS): Add Your Face to GIFs Through AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can do some wondrous things, including making fake pictures that look real. Morphin is another example of that, as it can take your face (or anyone else's) and add it to a popular GIF.
The app first asks you to take a clear, bright selfie so that it can recognize your face. Then, choose from its existing gallery of GIFs, which include movies, music videos, celebrities, popular reaction GIFs, and much more. It takes a few minutes to prepare those new GIFs, during which the app entertains you with a few quiz questions on what you just chose.
You can take multiple pictures of yourself and your friends to add it to the Faces gallery. But you have to manually choose the face before you pick the GIF. The same Faces gallery also has celebrity faces in there, in case you want to see what Keanu Reeves would look like as Iron Man.
If you think Morphin is cool, check out these other mind-blowing creations by AI.
Download: Morphin for Android | iOS (Free)
2. Giphy Cam (Android, iOS): Record GIFs From Your Phone
Giphy, one of the leading portals for GIFs, has an app that lets you record videos, and turns them into GIFs automatically. It's the easiest selfie GIF maker I have seen, and a cool way to record your own reactions and share with friends.
You can create short or long GIFs, roughly about five seconds in length. On any creation, you can add multiple stickers that can be flipped or resized, as well as filters to give it some pizzazz. You can also add text to the GIF, creating your own custom meme-like GIFs.
The GIFs can be directly shared on social media and chat apps, or saved for later. It's automatically added to the phone's image gallery or photo library, so you can access it from there to use it in any app. You aren't restricted to making selfie GIFs, of course, but that's where the most fun is.
Download: Giphy Cam for Android | iOS (Free)
Note: Here's what you need to know about your personal data, now that Facebook owns Giphy.
3. Gfycat Loops (Android): Record Screen and Turn to GIF
Like Giphy, Gfycat also has a dedicated app to take videos and turn them into GIFs. But its Android app has one extra feature: screen recording.
You can record a video of everything that is happening on your screen with the Gfycat app, which is automatically turned into a GIF. The GIF can be trimmed in length, cropped in size, and you can add text and stickers.
You will see the Gfycat "recording" icon on the top-right of the final GIF, but you can crop that out if you want. Unfortunately, while there is a Gfycat Loops app for iPhones, it doesn't support screen recording.
Download: Gfycat Loops for Android [Broken URL Removed] (Free)
4. GIFRun (Web): Fastest YouTube to GIF Creator
There are a lot of websites and apps that can convert YouTube videos into small GIFs. GIFRun is still special for the sheer speed and convenience it offers. The app includes a YouTube search engine and is crazy fast at making the GIF.
Search and choose the YouTube video from within GIFRun, so there is no copy-pasting URLs or any other such steps. The video will start playing, and you can choose the start time as well as the length of the GIF. You can even add text to the GIF. Keep it under five seconds if you want a GIF smaller than 5MB, which is often the data limit at most places.
Apart from YouTube, GIFRun also supports video to GIF conversion for Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But there is no search engine for those. If you want to look at other sites, then perhaps check these other ways to convert video to GIF.
5. Gifless (Web): Create GIFs of Emoji and Text
Gifless combines the internet's two new favorite modes of communication into one, letting you create a GIF that includes emojis. It's a super simple interface too.
In each line, you can add words or emojis. It's easier on mobile since keyboards have emojis, but there are sites online to copy-paste them too. In fact, you could copy-paste emojis, emoticons, and much more into Gifless.
Each line of text or emojis becomes a separate frame of your final GIF. You can even add different colors as backgrounds for different frames, to make them pop out more. Once you're done, download the final GIF to your hard drive to save it. Gifless is simple, efficient, and a cool way to level-up your GIF and emoji game.
6. GIFMuse.io (Web): A Hand-Curated Museum of Amazing GIFs
GIFs are more than just memes and reactions. Some artists treat the medium as art and create stunning animations. GIFMuse.io is a curated gallery of GIFs as artistic work.
In total, there are 57 artistic GIFs that use geometry, famous masterpieces, and mesmerizing movements to create a new art piece. I especially loved the Mondrian painting made to play a game of Pong, and the moving city in pixel art.
You can filter the gallery to view only illustrated works or only photographic works. But do take your time and go through all of them. This is one of those websites where you will go to check it out for a minute, and before you know it, an hour has passed.
More GIF Apps
Apart from all these apps to create and share GIFs just the way you want, there are a few more tools you should know about. There are dedicated desktop apps to record any part of the screen.
And if the GIF you created is too large, or needs to be cropped, resized, or rotated, there are free web apps for it. Here are some of the other best sites and apps to find, create, and edit GIFs.