The social network confirmed today that it is starting the rollout of supporting GIFs in its Newsfeeds. “”We built support for animated GIFs to help people express themselves in fun new ways on Facebook,” a spokesperson said.
Previously, there had been workarounds with apps like Giphy to post the animated images to Facebook, but they were not officially supported by the company. Facebook had been reticent to support the animated, meme-like images, but has apparently relaxed its position after the successful introduction of its auto-play videos.
Right now, it appears posting ability is limited to GIFs hosted elsewhere so you need to find a link to one on Giphy, Imgur, Tumblr, or whatever site you choose. Paste the link into your status update, and it should post the GIF inline to your Facebook news feed.
How To Post An Animated GIF On Facebook
To make them work, simply paste the URL of an animated GIF into Facebook’s “update status” field. You can then add text as usual. (Gorburger not included.)
Uploading an animated GIF from your computer using the “add photos/video” function does not work at this time.
A representative for Facebook did not say why animations have been enabled after so much time without them, but did confirm to The Huffington Post that the new feature is indeed “rolling out” to users. Hold tight if it’s not working for you yet.
At least one workaround to get animated GIFs on Facebook has cropped up before, though this is the most straightforward functionality yet.
