MP4 to GIF: video to GIF and boomerang maker
Gifsy turns an MP4, WebM or MOV video into a GIF or a back-and-forth boomerang in your browser. Trim up to 10 seconds, pick the size and frame rate, crop it square for Discord, and download a looping GIF. Free, no sign up, no watermark, and the video never leaves this tab.
Only have photos? Make a boomerang from photos or animate a single photo.
↑ Add a video to begin. It stays on your device.
How to convert MP4 (or any video) to GIF
Three steps, all in this tab. Starting from photos instead? Use the slideshow GIF maker or animate a single photo.
- 1
Add a video
MP4, WebM or MOV from your phone or computer. It opens in this tab; nothing is uploaded.
- 2
Trim and set it up
Pick up to 10 seconds, a size, a frame rate and a speed. Crop it square for Discord, or turn on Boomerang.
- 3
Make GIF, then download
You see the estimated size before you start and the exact size after. It saves as video.gif.
What you get
Input
MP4, WebM, MOV
Whatever this browser can play.
Length
Up to 10 s of GIF
At 2× speed, that's 20 s of video.
Output
320, 480 or 640 px
Longest side; never upscaled.
Cost
Free, no sign up
No watermark, no limit.
Video to boomerang, online and free
A boomerang plays a moment forward and then backward, so the end runs straight back into the start. Instagram made it popular; here it's a switch. Trim to one to three seconds of action (a jump, a pour, a hair flip), turn on Boomerang, and the GIF loops back and forth with no jump. Expect roughly twice the file size, since every frame but the first and last is written twice. No video, only a burst of photos? The boomerang GIF maker does the same thing from stills.
A GIF for Discord
Discord takes GIFs in a few places, each with its own rules. The sizes below come from Discord's help centre, collected in the GIF size limits guide.
Which videos work
The tool reads video with your browser's own player, so the question is which formats the browser can decode. MP4 with H.264 and WebM are safe everywhere. HEVC, the iPhone default, is the one that trips people up.
How big will the GIF be?
Bigger than the video, usually. A GIF stores every frame as a full picture with at most 256 colours, while a video file only stores what changes. These are real files made with this page on 25 September 2026, one shared palette, Boomerang off unless noted:
3 s, 480×270, 12 fps
2.2 MB
36 frames. Made in about 2.5 s.
10 s, 480×270, 12 fps
7.0 MB
120 frames. Over X's 5 MB phone limit.
3 s, 480×349, camera footage
3.3 MB
Busy scenes compress worse.
3 s, 320 square, boomerang
3.2 MB
70 frames. A Discord profile picture size.
To make a GIF smaller: shorten the clip, drop to 10 fps, pick 320, or leave Boomerang off. Speed 2× halves the frames for the same stretch of video.
Where this tool stops
- Good at
- Short moments: reactions, loops, product spins
- Square GIFs for Discord profile pictures
- Boomerangs from any clip
- Keeping the video private: it never leaves the tab
- Won't do (yet)
- Clips longer than 10 seconds of GIF
- Sound, captions or text on the GIF
- A custom crop box (only centre square or the full frame)
- Frame-by-frame size tricks that shave megabytes off
Questions
Is it free, and is there a watermark?
Free, with no sign up, no watermark and no limit on how many GIFs you make. The only paid thing on Gifsy is credits for the separate 3D model tool.
Is my video uploaded?
No. The file opens inside this browser tab, frames are read from it with the browser's own video player, and the GIF is encoded on your device. Open the Network tab while you make one: the only request is the page's own encoder script.
How do I make a boomerang from a video?
Add the video, trim it to the moment you want (one to three seconds works best), turn on Boomerang and make the GIF. It plays forward and then backward, so the loop never jumps. The file ends up almost twice as big, because the frames are written twice.
What size should a GIF be for Discord?
Anything up to 20 MB uploads on a free account. For a GIF profile picture you need Nitro, and a square crop is best because Discord shows avatars as a circle. A custom emoji has to be under 256 KB, which a GIF from a video almost never is, and animated stickers have to be APNG rather than GIF.
Why won't my iPhone video open?
iPhones record in HEVC by default. Safari plays it, Chrome only on devices with hardware HEVC decoding, and Firefox from version 137. If it won't open, try Safari, or set Camera, Formats to Most Compatible on the iPhone so new videos are H.264.
How long can the GIF be?
Up to 10 seconds of GIF, and up to 150 frames. Bigger sizes get fewer frames (104 at 640 by 360, 58 at 640 square) because every frame sits in memory before encoding, and phones run out of room first.
Can I convert MP4 to GIF, or WebM to GIF?
Yes, both work in every major browser. MOV works wherever the browser can play it, which comes down to the codec inside: H.264 plays everywhere, HEVC doesn't.
Does the GIF keep the sound?
No. GIF has no audio track, so the sound is dropped. If you need sound, share the video itself.