How to make a GIF on iPhone

iPhone 14 Pro with camera app on screen sitting on wooden table

(Image credit: iMore)

Animated GIFs are everywhere, so naturally, you want to be able to make a GIF on your iPhone. Luckily making GIFs on iPhone is super easy to do and can be done natively using the Photos app on all the best iPhones.

In this how-to guide, we're going to show you how to make a GIF on iPhone so you can make yourself and your friends and family laugh.

How to make a GIF on iPhone using Photos

In order to make animated GIFs on your iPhone, you'll need to enlist the help of some third party apps.

Open Camera
Tap the Live Photo button in the top right corner
Take a photo of a moving subject

Open Photos and head to Live Photos in the Albums tab
Pick an image to make into a GIF
You'll see a dropdown in the top left that says Live. Tap it and choose between Bounce or Loop

Picking Loop will loop the footage so it plays over and over again. Picking Bounce, however, makes the GIF play and then rewind, which is perfect for animations of my dog, Kermit.

Once you've chosen Loop or Bounce, you can share the GIF via the Share icon and access all your GIFs by selecting Animated in your Albums tab.

Making GIFs on your iPhone has never been this easy!

It's as easy as that. Of course, you'll be making more GIFs than you'll know what to do with, and your friends and family will probably block you from continuously sending animated messages, but it's fun, so do it anyway.

If you want to make fancier GIFs using clips from tv shows or films, we have a great list of the best GIF apps for iPhone as well as how to use Twitter to make GIFs. Although, I much prefer the random animated images of my dog moving his head back and forth.

John-Anthony Disotto is the How To Editor of iMore, ensuring you can get the most from your Apple products and helping fix things when your technology isn’t behaving itself. Living in Scotland, where he worked for Apple as a technician focused on iOS and iPhone repairs at the Genius Bar, John-Anthony has used the Apple ecosystem for over a decade and prides himself in his ability to complete his Apple Watch activity rings. John-Anthony has previously worked in editorial for collectable TCG websites and graduated from The University of Strathclyde where he won the Scottish Student Journalism Award for Website of the Year as Editor-in-Chief of his university paper. He is also an avid film geek, having previously written film reviews and received the Edinburgh International Film Festival Student Critics award in 2019. John-Anthony also loves to tinker with other non-Apple technology and enjoys playing around with game emulation and Linux on his Steam Deck.

In his spare time, John-Anthony can be found watching any sport under the sun from football to darts, taking the term “Lego house” far too literally as he runs out of space to display any more plastic bricks, or chilling on the couch with his French Bulldog, Kermit.