GIF Resizer

A still image is one grid of pixels, so resizing it is a single operation. An animated GIF is a sequence of frames with their own timing, an optional local palette per frame, and a loop instruction for the player. Resizing it means taking all of that apart, resampling each frame, and reassembling a valid animation — while keeping the delays and the loop flag so playback is unchanged.

This is why so many general-purpose image tools quietly return a still picture when given a GIF. They read the first frame, resize that, and write it back out. The file is still a valid GIF and still opens, so the failure is easy to miss until you notice nothing is moving. Here every frame is read, and the frame count of the output is measured and displayed so the outcome is not left to chance.

With the ratio locked, entering one dimension fills in the other from the GIF's own proportions. This is what you want almost all the time: forcing both numbers to values that do not match the original stretches the picture, which is immediately obvious on faces, circles and text.

When a platform demands exact dimensions that do not match your GIF's shape, resize with the ratio locked so the content fits within those bounds, and accept a small difference on one side rather than distorting every frame. Stretching is far more noticeable in motion than it is in a still image.

Because a GIF stores each frame separately, the pixel count of a single frame is multiplied by the number of frames. Reducing the dimensions is therefore the highest-leverage change available: halving both width and height leaves a quarter of the pixels in every frame, and the saving compounds across the whole animation.

That is usually a better first move than reaching for palette reduction, and the two combine well. Resize to the largest size the GIF will genuinely be displayed at, then compress if you still need to reach a specific file size. Pixels you have already removed cost nothing to compress.

Enlarging is available, and modest increases hold up reasonably well. Substantial ones do not, for two reasons that stack: no resampling method can recover detail that was never captured, and GIF's 256-colour ceiling means the smooth intermediate tones that make an enlargement look natural often are not available to store.

If you need a genuinely larger animation, going back to the original video or project file and exporting at the size you need will always beat enlarging a finished GIF.

Resizing an animation requires re-encoding it, which browsers cannot do, so this runs on our server rather than on your device. Your GIF is sent over HTTPS, kept in memory for the moment the work takes, and discarded once the resized file has been returned. Nothing is written to disk, logged or retained.