How to Add and display an Animated Gif in your Tumblr

Many Tumblrs seem to have problems when they try to add, display and posting an animated gif, even when the size is small enough it appears to show up as a regular jpeg pic. We found a couple of tricks that make sure your animated gif picture gets inserted and shows up correctly in your Tumblr.

I recommend you try the following method to put and display an animated gif picture in your Tumblr blog.

How To Add an Animated Gif to your Tumblr.

Publishing a Photo/Text Post and Inserting an Image

Tumblr seems to have problems when handling animated gif that are “bigger than expected”, I’m not exactly talking about the size in memory but the actual width and height in pixels. First of all, what you always must do is host the animated gif in an external hosting site, I personally recommend TinyPic. This site never has problems when trying to display animated gif images. Now, I suggest you use the Text Post Type instead of the photo one, I don’t know why but there are fewer issues when you put your animated gif this way. One in the post click on insert image and paste the animted gif url that TinyPic gave you, click on insert and publish.

That’s it, if you are still having trouble getting your animated gif displayed this way leave us a message with the problem description.

15 Responses to "How to Add and display an Animated Gif in your Tumblr"

Vanessa
January 21, 2011 at 12:45 am

I know you guys get a lot of problems but I just wanted to say that you guys are doing a great job! Thanks for the website

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Grubin
January 24, 2011 at 8:52 am

I’ve learned that keeping the file size under 500kb works as well.

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Hannah Gropper
March 28, 2011 at 2:08 am

Still can’t do it. In the help center it says that it has to be 512K or >500px. I got it less than 500px but I just can’t figure out how to shrink it byte-wise. I have tried lots of routes of uploading: URL through photo post and text post and just straight uploading it in photo posts. Please help! I love my first GIF and I really want to show it off.

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Bianca
May 6, 2011 at 10:09 pm

I did what the article says, and it’s showing up as a little gray box on my dash.. you have to click on it to see the gif.. how do I fix that?

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Nick
May 7, 2011 at 6:51 pm

When i post the GIF that way it shows up as a little Polaroid icon. I know you can click it to make it show but i dont want that!

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jazz
May 8, 2011 at 4:53 am

I don’t know which url to choose because it doesn’t have one for tumblr

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Sam
February 22, 2012 at 6:03 am

Hi! This is very helpful but when I do this, my gif shows up as a gray box that you have to click on if you want to view it. Is there any way to avoid/fix this?

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Gabriela
September 13, 2012 at 3:47 am

@Sam: It’s really simple! After putting the gif’s url in the upload window you”ll see a number in the url, usually something like .25 . Just erase that and you’ll be able to see the images/gifs without having to click on them!

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Amateur pics tumblr
September 17, 2012 at 11:09 pm

It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d without a doubt donate to this superb blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking
and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to brand
new updates and will share this site with my Facebook group.
Talk soon!

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Paul
October 4, 2012 at 1:27 am

I have just done one using tinypic, using a text post and the add/insert image option.
But now i have to click on the image of a photo in the post to see the gif. why is this and how can i fix that?

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G
October 28, 2012 at 9:01 pm

I have been attempting to make an animated gif today from a video and have created this… as you can see i have uploded it onto tinypic but when i do what you says it comes up with a box with a small red x. I have also attempted to upload it by tumblr video uploads, and through a link, and have spent hours earching on the internet.. I am sorry, being very stupid here but i would like to create more gifs but i cant! i made the gifs on photoshop, and have saved it as a gif, jpeg, and psd but nothing works…

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Patricia
December 7, 2012 at 9:54 pm

Hey, thanks a million. It worked!!! I posted a 3.4mb gif. Another question – on chrome my tumblr page puts ‘Stuff I like’ & “People I Follow,” below my posts. On Safari it correctly displays them to the right of my posts. This problem only happens on my computer. Any ideas why?

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Janine
January 6, 2013 at 7:15 pm

my gif is 400KB and 400×235
it plays once but won’t loop! how do I fix this?

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Charley
January 15, 2013 at 8:27 am

I still just get grey boxes? They’re all under 500k and they have the correct measurements, is there any way to stop this happening?

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Mr. Tumblr Reply:
February 1st, 2013 at 11:59 am
Smaller images, and check they work outside tumblr.

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