Do you want to add animated GIFs in your WordPress blog posts?
GIFs can help capture your visitor’s attention and increase engagement with your blog posts. However, when you add an animated GIF in WordPress, it could lose the animation and appear as a plain static image.
In this article, we will show you how to properly add animated GIFs in WordPress.
Why Are Your WordPress GIFs Not Working Properly?
Sometimes animated GIFs become static images in WordPress because it automatically generates multiple sizes of the image, but only from the first frame of the animation.
Why does that happen?
Whenever you add any type of image to your WordPress website using the media uploader, WordPress automatically creates several copies of that image in different sizes.
There are 4 default WordPress image sizes, including thumbnail, medium, large, and full size.
However, when creating new image sizes for animated GIFs, WordPress ends up saving only the first frame of the GIF.
As a result, when you add any of those generated image sizes into your post or page, they will be static images and result in WordPress GIF not working.
Having said that, let’s take a look at how to properly add animated GIFs in WordPress without losing animation.
Properly Adding Animated GIFs in WordPress
First, you need to edit or create a new post or page to add the animated GIF.
Once you’re in the WordPress content editor, go ahead and click the ‘+’ button and add an ‘Image’ block.
Next, you’ll find multiple ways to upload your animated GIF in the Image block.
To start, simply click the ‘Upload’ button and select your animated GIF from your computer. Or you can click the ‘Media Library’ button and choose a GIF that’s already been uploaded to your media library.
There’s also an option to enter the link to your GIF by clicking the ‘Insert from URL’ button, but we don’t recommend using this because it does not upload the image to your website.
Once you upload your GIF, WordPress will insert it into your content.
After adding the GIF, you’ll need to select the ‘full size’ option under Image Size from the menu on your right.
The full-size image is the original animated GIF you uploaded to WordPress. This will prevent your WordPress GIFs from showing up as static images and not playing the animation.
You will be able to see the animation right away in the content editor.
Go ahead and publish or update your blog post to see the animated GIFs in action.
Bonus Tips on Using Animated GIFs in WordPress
Animated GIF images are usually larger in file size than other image files. That’s because they contain several compressed images used as frames to create the animation.
Using large GIFs or adding too many GIF images on a WordPress page can slow down your website. See our ultimate guide on how to improve WordPress speed and performance for more details.
If you use Giphy to find animated GIFs, then you may find the GIF Master plugin very useful. It allows you to search the Giphy database from your WordPress admin area and add GIFs without leaving your site.
Similarly, you can also use EmbedPress to automatically add animated GIFs from Gfycat. Simply enter the URL of your GIF from Gfycat and the plugin will embed it into your content.
We hope this article helped you learn how to add animated GIFs in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 22 great WordPress plugins for managing images and how to start an online store.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Lise says
This was a very helpful blogpost.
I’ve been uploading gifs to giphy, but they became blurry in my page.
However I now have high quality gifs.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad you found our guide helpful!
Admin
Karl Heinz Burkhardt says
This was very helpful. Thank you very much.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide was helpful!
Admin
Melissa says
Thank you – lifesaver!
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad our guide could be helpful
Admin
Alexandre says
Doesn’t work for me?
WPBeginner Support says
You may want to ensure you don’t have an image optimization plugin that is attempting to modify the GIF
Admin
Giron says
How to make start and stop by clicking the mouse for gif animation?
WPBeginner Support says
While we don’t have a recommended method at the moment, we will certainly take a look for a possible addition to this article
Admin
Joy says
Thank you guys. This really helped.
ed says
are there any user comment plugins out there that allow users to add gifs?
Brian says
Any idea how to easily add a post with an iOS Live Photo? Thanks!
Christophe says
Hi,
I’ve added a animated gif on my WordPress site following your example. It worked but now the .gif has completely disappeared, even from my Media Library.
Any idea where this could be coming from?
Many thanks
Christopher Eldridge says
Hi, in my case, the media uploader does not offer the option to change the size of the file. Is that because I’m using the free version of WordPress? If so, which version must I purchase to be able to modify the size of the file and have a functioning GIF animation?
Thanks!
Chris
Johnson says
I have an auto blog site in which I use to post to my social networks. I do not write posts I only upload images and use Auto Image Post and Draft Scheduler plugins to automate them.
Admin please how do I make all my uploaded gif animate automatically?
I have tried several plugins but none worked. i will greatly apreciate your help.
Thanks.
John Mauldin says
Great article and GREAT Timing! Just looked at and downloaded an animated gif I need to put on a wp site. Thanks so much for this information, wpbeginner.com!
Rakesh kumar says
Thanks a lot!! It was very simple and yet very effective. Most of us will miss this trick.
Donna Merrill says
To my knowledge I’ve always heard that adding a GIF will slow down my blog. This is why I haven’t used it as yet. However I do have some niche sites that it just may not be a problem.
Thanks for clarifying it.
-Donna