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Why are my gifs saving as images?

So when I try and save a gif, (yes, it even says it’s a gif in the bottom left corner) it saves as an image. And it’s really annoying, I’ve tried with hundreds of different gifs and all of them would just save as an image.

Posted on Sep 13, 2020 6:38 PM

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Posted on Sep 21, 2020 5:57 PM

I’ve found that the DucknGo browser (still) saves gifs as gifs to your iOS images library. As a bonus, it blocks some website tracking of your online activity. It has a few peculiarities but if Chrome and Safari (iOS 14) are truly designed not to save some images in their original format going forward, DucknGo will likely become my default browser.

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Sep 21, 2020 5:57 PM in response to sindecay

I’ve found that the DucknGo browser (still) saves gifs as gifs to your iOS images library. As a bonus, it blocks some website tracking of your online activity. It has a few peculiarities but if Chrome and Safari (iOS 14) are truly designed not to save some images in their original format going forward, DucknGo will likely become my default browser.

Sep 17, 2020 7:50 PM in response to sindecay

I noticed gifs saved via chrome /iOS began saving as still images after google’s (approx) Aug 30 Chrome update. I posted my concern last week on a Google support thread that someone had begun approx first week of Sept. There were already several users on that thread having same issue. I’m supposed to be notified of any other activity on that thread & there has been none.


Someone on that thread mentioned Safari (iOS 13) still saved gifs as gifs, so I began using it.

From this thread it sounds like Apple has removed ‘save gifs as gifs’ in iOS 14. If that’s the case, I’ll be keeping my I-devices on iOS 13. I have another iPad with an older version of Chrome on it & it still saves gifs as gifs.


I’d mentioned the Chrome /gifs issue to a developer & he speculated that the change might be intentional on Google’s part. Goggle Support hasn’t commented on the thread in the other forum and their most recent Chrome update this week didn’t fix the issue. And now the Safari (which I’ve heard based on Chrome) no longer supports gif saving in it’s latest iteration. Yikes.


Fyi, Firefox on iOS still saves gifs as gifs but -imho- its a weaker browser.

Sep 13, 2020 7:09 PM in response to CooperJacobs

Is that a screen shot from a web page somewhere? If so, I would guess that the site is, for who knows what reason, tagging the file format of that image so you know what it will be when you save it.


The GIF format goes way back to the days of CompuServe and the origins of AOL. I'm kind of surprised anyone bothers to use it anymore.


It's defined as a lossless image format, but that's being pretty darn generous. A GIF can only have a maximum palette of 256 colors. Say you start with a JPEG that has a few thousand distinct RGB values in the pixels that make up the image. When you save it to the GIF format (also called Indexed color), the photo software examines it for the best possible 256 RGB values to use. The entire image is then mashed down to only those 256 palette colors. It's also why when you clone brush on an indexed image, the brush shape is always a hard edge. You can't blend part of one pixel with another as that would result in an RGB value that doesn't exist in the palette.

Why are my gifs saving as images?

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