A2ZGIF

Guide

How to use A2ZGIF: every feature explained

A2ZGIF is a free GIF maker that runs in your browser. This guide walks through each tool, what it is for, and the order that gives the best results.

Updated · All guides

A2ZGIF does everything on one screen. You add media, pick a tool from the rail, preview the result, and export. There are no separate pages for cropping, resizing, or adding text, and nothing to install. The Guide page is the short, one-page reference. This article goes deeper on what each tool is good for and how the tools fit together.

Before you start: what you can use

A2ZGIF accepts three kinds of files, in any mix:

  • Videos: MP4, WebM, and MOV.
  • GIFs: including animated WebP and PNG.
  • Images: JPG, PNG, and WebP.

Files can be up to 250 MB on a computer and 150 MB on a phone. You can also paste links to files, one per line, instead of uploading. Nothing is sent to a server, so there is no upload queue to wait in.

Step 1: Add your media

On the home page, press Upload video, GIF, or images, drag files onto the page, or paste links into the link box and press Load. You can also copy an image or a link and press Ctrl/⌘ + V anywhere on the page.

A few things worth knowing:

  • Several files make one timeline. Links load top to bottom; files load in the order your file picker lists them. This is how you turn a set of photos into a slideshow GIF: see images to GIF.
  • Add more later. Inside the editor, Add media puts new media at the end or right after the selected frame. If the new clip is a different shape, you choose whether it is fitted with blurred bars or cropped.
  • Play clips together. Under How, choose Side by side or Stacked to play new media next to your GIF instead of after it. Both play at once, and the shorter one repeats.

Starting from a video? The video to GIF page covers that workflow in more detail.

Step 2: Learn the editor layout

  • The tool rail is on the left (at the bottom on phones). Pick a tool and its options open next to the preview.
  • The preview shows the selected frame. Press Play to watch the whole animation.
  • The timeline sits under the preview. Click a frame to select it, drag frames to reorder them, or hover a frame and click × to remove it.
  • Frame ranges. Tools with Start frame and End frame sliders light up the chosen range on the timeline and fade the rest, so you never have to count frames.
  • Undo and Redo are in the top bar.

Hover a frame (tap it on a phone) and press its pause button to hold it one second longer. Frames held a second or more show their time.

Step 3: Edit with the tools

Trim: keep only the best part

Drag Start frame and End frame to the part you want and press Apply Trim. Do this first. A shorter GIF is a smaller GIF, and every later tool has fewer frames to work on.

Crop and Fit: change the shape

Crop cuts away the parts you don't want. Pick a shape (Free, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9, 9:16, or 4:3), drag the corners to resize the box, drag inside it to move it, and press Apply Crop. On a touch screen you can move and resize the box with your fingers.

Fit changes the shape without cutting anything off. Pick the shape and fill the extra space with Blur, a solid Color, or Transparent. It is the quickest way to turn a landscape clip into a vertical one for Reels, Shorts, or TikTok.

Rotate: turn and mirror

Rotate 90°, Flip Horizontal, and Flip Vertical apply immediately. Handy for phone footage that came in sideways.

Reverse and Loop: play it backwards, or loop it cleanly

Choose a range, or Select all frames, and press the Reverse button. Under Loop you get two more options:

  • Boomerang plays the range forward and then backward, forever.
  • Perfect loop fades the last frames into the first ones (Short, Medium, or Long) so the restart has no visible jump. Use it on a clip that does not loop naturally.

Duplicate: repeat a frame or a range

Hover a frame and click the copy button to duplicate it. To repeat several frames, open Duplicate, pick the range, set Copies (up to 10), choose Right after or At the end, and add them. Copies keep each frame's delay.

Text: captions, memes, bubbles, and stickers

Everything you can add is under Add:

  • Text for free-form text.
  • Ready-made styles: Meme, Caption, Subtitles, Label, and Title.
  • A speech Bubble, including a Cut-out version that is see-through, as in the Discord reaction format.
  • Sticker, with emoji in six categories plus word stickers like LOL and BRUH.

Each item appears under On your GIF. Click one to change the text, font, size, bold, italic, underline, color, outline, background Box, opacity, alignment, whether it sits on the image or in a Panel bar, and the frames it shows on. Drag items on the preview to place them, then press Apply. For meme work specifically, see the meme GIF maker page.

Speed: slow motion, freezes, and smoothing

  • Change one frame's Delay (ms), set every frame to the same delay, or pick a playback speed from 0.2x to 5x.
  • Hold frame longer (+0.5s, +1s, +2s) freezes a moment. Pause on the last frame gives a punchline time to land before the loop restarts.
  • Add in-between frames (2×) blends neighboring frames to double the frame rate. It smooths slow movement, though fast movement can ghost and the file gets bigger.
  • Under Several frames, apply a speed or delay to just part of the clip, for a slow-motion punchline with the rest untouched.

Effects: filters on any range

Tap any mix of Grayscale, Sepia, Invert, Brighten, Contrast, Vivid, Blur, Pixelate, and Vignette, choose which frames they apply to, and press Apply Effects.

Background: cut out the subject

Remove the background from every frame, then replace it with Nothing (see-through), a Color, or Blur. Choose Person for the cleanest edges around people, or Pet or object for everything else, plus Sharp or Soft edges. The model is about 12 MB, downloads the first time you open the tool, and then runs on your device. On a clip you can limit the change to a range of frames.

Motion: animate a still picture

Turn one image into a looping GIF, or add movement to a clip, with Shake, Zoom punch, Focus zoom, Spin, Pulse, Bounce, Jelly, Swing, Flip, Float, Heartbeat, Glitch, Party, or Pet. Choose the Intensity and, for a still, the Speed. For Focus zoom, tap the preview to pick the point to zoom in on. Changed your mind right after applying? Change the setting and press Update Motion to replace the effect instead of stacking another on top.

Sound: keep the video's audio, or add music

A GIF cannot hold sound, but an MP4 or WebM can. In Sound you can turn the video's own sound on or off and adjust its volume, add a music file (MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, or FLAC), choose where the song starts and stops, and set its volume. When clips play one after another, each clip's sound plays on its turn. Export as MP4 or WebM to keep the sound.

Step 4: Set the size and format

Open Size last, once you know what the GIF looks like.

  • Format: GIF, MP4, or WebM. MP4 is usually far smaller than a GIF, and it is what many platforms turn GIFs into anyway. Videos cannot be transparent.
  • Resolution: pick a preset or type a Custom width.
  • Quality or target size: for a GIF, set the quality, or choose a platform (Discord, Twitter/X, WhatsApp, Reddit, Slack) or Custom to aim for a file size. The estimate updates as you change things and turns red if it is still over the limit.
  • Emoji and emotes: the Discord, Slack, and Twitch presets make a small square file within each platform's limit. If your GIF isn't square, you're asked to crop or fit it first. More on this on the Discord GIF maker page.
  • Loop: Forever, Play once, or Custom.

If the file is still too big, the usual fixes, in order, are: trim more, lower the resolution, lower the quality, or export as video with GIF to MP4.

Step 5: Export

Press Export in the top bar, or Download GIF inside Size. The file saves straight to your device. On a phone, a Share button also appears so you can send it to WhatsApp, Discord, or another app.

Starting again

  • Reset returns you to your original upload, and you can undo a Reset too.
  • Clicking the A2ZGIF logo starts over with new files. It asks first, because the current GIF is discarded.
  • Nothing is saved when you close the tab, so export before you leave.

A sensible order for most GIFs

  1. Add media.
  2. Trim to the good part.
  3. Crop or Fit to the shape you need.
  4. Remove the background, or add effects or motion, if you want them.
  5. Add text and stickers.
  6. Set speed and loop.
  7. Pick the format and size, then export.

Ready to try it? Open the GIF maker and start with a clip you already have.

Pick the right starting point

New here? Read about A2ZGIF to see how it stays free and private.

Using A2ZGIF: common questions

In what order should I edit a GIF?

Trim first so you only work on the frames you keep, then crop, add effects and text, adjust speed, and set the size and format last. Frames you trim away never add to the export size.

Can I undo a mistake?

Yes. Undo and Redo are in the top bar (Ctrl/⌘ + Z and Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + Z), and Reset takes you back to your original upload.

Is my work saved if I close the tab?

No. Everything stays on your device and nothing is stored, so export before you leave.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The tools move to a bar at the bottom of the screen, and after exporting a Share button sends the file straight to WhatsApp, Discord, or another app.

Is anything uploaded to a server?

No. Videos, images, and GIFs are processed on your own device. See the FAQ for details.

Open the GIF maker