How to send GIFs in Telegram: advanced features

The developers of Telegram have made a present for GIF-lovers by significantly improving the given functionality. In this article, we want to provide information on the ways of sending Telegram GIFs and advanced features which are available when working with such files.

The latest modifications you need to be aware of when using animated images

Relatively heavy weight of a GIF-animation is a real problem for mobile application users. In addition to wasted Internet-traffic, load increase on the mobile device operating system when downloading and sending GIF-files is taking place which is also regarded as a considerable disadvantage.

Due to the latest innovations in Telegram, the users can send GIFs twenty times faster, thus considerably reducing traffic and decreasing the load on the hardware. Such progress was achieved by means of animated image re-encoding to MPEG-4 files. The given process is carried out without user intervention due to its complete automation. After such modification, the GIF-animation weight decreases practically several times, although a format change does not affect image quality one way or another.

As supplementary to re-encoding, Telegram work with GIFs has become more optimized. In older versions, you had to launch GIF-animations manually, and now they play automatically (although you can still enable the manual mode in Settings). Besides, you have a possibility of viewing several GIFs on one screen which is rather handy for 5-inch and higher devices.

How to send GIFs in Telegram: the sticker panel and inline bots

New functionality allowed to significantly simplify the process of sending GIFs. There is a dedicated GIF tab on the sticker panel where all your downloaded and viewed animations are stored. In order to add a GIF-file to the panel, you need to follow these instructions:

1. Tap beside an image (for Android), long tap it (for iOS) or put cursor on a GIF-animation and right-click it (for PC).
2. Select the «Save» option in the resulting context menu.

After doing this, you will be able to send saved GIFs to your friends with single-click ease. In other words, sending GIFs is not any harder than sending emoji.

It is necessary to put a special focus on the appearance of so called inline bots which make the work with Telegram easier for an ordinary person. In particular, in order to make a request to the bot responsible for GIF-animations, you need to type his name (@gif) in any chat and then indicate the category you are interested in (for example, “cat”). After processing your request, the @gif bot will offer you the most popular variants with the category you indicated. When you will select some particular GIF-image, you can immediately send it to your conversation partner. By doing so, you automatically save it on the sticker panel.

Other peculiarities of working with GIFs:

• Possibility of sending multiple GIFs. You can select several files at once and attach them to one message.
• Simple requested content selection. You can view several GIFs at once in the attachment menu where system animations are located. That is to say, you do not need to spend your time on examining each of the animated pictures any more.
• Large variety of files. Making a particular request, a user is offered lots of GIF-animations of the corresponding topic. All GIFs located in the @gif botʼs library are taken from http://giphy.com/. It is a large catalogue of GIF-files.
• Variety of sources. The GIF-bots search files not only in Telegram gallery but also on the Internet.

How to make a GIF-image by yourself

Telegram allows both using other users’ GIFs and also creating your own ones. Besides, an animated image creation algorithm is very simple:

1. Go to the dialogue box and tap the paper-clip button meant for attaching files. Further, select the “Video” option.
2. Choose a short video clip, tap the record button and create a new video record.
3. After finishing the recording process, you will see a window where you need to click the “Mute” button and tap “Send”.
4. The system will convert the given video into a looped animation and add it to the dialogue box.

There also exist lots of bots for creating GIFs. For example, the Gifs.com Bot allows getting an animated image from a video file found on practically any service, including Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc. In such a way, the users’ possibilities are actually unlimited which allows making the communication process more interesting and creative.