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Tech for Luddites

News, Views, and How-Tos for a Digital World

How to Watch Animated GIFs on an iPhone or iPad

Last Updated: October 24, 2016

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Apple iOS Photos AppI had three potential titles for this post. The first was your basic “What is this post about?” one I ended up going with above.

The second was “Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us!” After I wrote about Hoda Kotb’s problem with her email after upgrading her iPhone to iOS 10, a few days ago I saw this tweet from Josh Charles (Dead Poets Society, Sports Night, The Good Wife, Masters of Sex…):

Quick help: someone sent me a gif that I want to save on my phone, but it keeps saving as a photo only. What am I doing wrong?

— Josh Charles (@MrJoshCharles) October 20, 2016

I wasn’t fast enough to reply to him before many of his other followers did, but that was partly because I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. I had my Galaxy S5 phone nearby and found a GIF and mailed it to myself and downloaded it and clicked on it and voila! A moving GIF.

So then I went and got my iPad mini and downloaded the GIF to it and clicked on it and… wha???

via GIPHY

That’s right… There was no animation. Apparently the default Photos app on iOS devices doesn’t support animated GIFs.

Which brings me to my third possible title for this post: “Why Do People Keep Insisting that iPhones Are Better than Androids?!”

via GIPHY

The first thing to know is that even though a saved GIF doesn’t show up as animated in your Photos app, it still does in programs that support it. So you can still text the GIF to someone and it will show up as animated.

If you want to actually confirm this to yourself before sending it (or you just want to look at it on your phone/tablet anytime you want), you can either install another app like GIF Viewer, or share the image to Mail and watch it play in the message body.

And that’s all there is to it… Special thanks to @MrJoshCharles for inspiring today’s post!

via GIPHY

You may also be interested in:

Fix Email Issues Caused by Upgrading Your iPhone/iPad to iOS 10

Stop the &%!*@# Ringer Message from Popping Up Over and Over Again on Your iPhone or iPad

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Celebrities, Graphics, How To, iPad, iPhone Tagged With: Gif

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