YouTube Gets A Built-In GIF Creator

Remember back in November of last year when I wrote that YouTube needed to build its own tool for making GIFs from videos? Some called me crazy. Many, however, agreed completely.

It seems YouTube agreed, too. YouTube is now quietly rolling out its own GIF maker.

It doesn’t seem to be enabled on all videos just yet, but it’s definitely there for some. Take, for example, pretty much any video from PBS’ Idea Channel (as spotted first by Andy Baio). Click to one of their videos, hit the share button, and GIF away.

GIF creation through the tool is quite simple: tap the share button, set your start/end points, set any captions you might want, and create away. The tool is super fast, and YouTube hosts the GIFs themselves.

The final look of the tool isn’t too unlike the mockup I did back with that first post, which means I’m totally going to take 100 percent credit for this idea despite the fact it had probably been in the works for months/years.

Need to make a GIF now, but YouTube’s new tool isn’t enabled on your oh-so-GIFable video yet? Don’t forget this trick, which turns pretty much any YouTube video into a GIF with just a quick URL tweak.

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