How to Add a GIF in Slack: Picker, /giphy and Uploads

To add a GIF in Slack, click the smiley face icon in the message field, click the GIFs tab, search, click a GIF and press Send. On iPhone or Android, tap the smiley face in the message field, then GIFs. The picker is built into Slack and powered by GIPHY, so there is nothing to install. If the menu shows only emoji and no GIFs tab, the GIF picker is off for your workspace, and only an owner or admin can turn it on. You can still upload a GIF file or paste a GIPHY link.

We tested this on 27 October 2026 in our own Slack workspace (Free plan, Slack in the browser). The GIFs tab was not there at first: under Admin, Settings, Attach a GIF, the box Enable the GIF picker was not ticked, and no one had changed it since the workspace was created in June. After we ticked it and saved, the smiley menu showed two tabs, Emoji and GIFs, and a GIF went out with a message. So yes, you can send GIFs in Slack, but on a new workspace you may have to ask an admin first.

Slack also has the older /giphy command, which needs the GIPHY app, and you can upload your own GIF or turn one into an animated emoji. All five ways are below. A GIF file you uploaded can be swapped later from Edit message, the way you edit an image in a Slack message.

To make a GIF of your own, the free Slack emoji maker works as a Slack GIF creator in the browser, covered below.

Five ways to put a GIF in Slack

Send a GIF with the Slack GIF picker

On desktop:

• Click in the message field of a channel or DM.
• Click the smiley face icon in the message field.
• Click the GIFs tab at the top of the menu, next to Emoji.
• Type a word, such as "thank you" or "coffee", and click a GIF.
• Add text if you want, then press Send or Enter.


On iPhone or Android:

• Tap the message field to open the keyboard.
• Tap the smiley face icon, then GIFs.
• Search, tap a GIF, and tap Send.

Clicking a GIF does not send it. Slack puts it under the message field as a small preview, so you can type a line to go with it, and both go out when you press Enter. This is the "GIF keyboard" people ask about. Slack does not use your phone's own GIF keyboard; the picker inside Slack is the one that works in every app version. A pasted image or file works the same way, and our inline image test shows it always lands under the text, never between two lines.



There is no /gif shortcut. With the picker on, we listed the workspace's slash commands through Slack's API, and none of the 24 built-in commands had "gif" in its name. Use the smiley face, or /giphy if your workspace has the GIPHY app. The other commands are in Slack slash commands.

What Slack stores when you send a GIF

A picker GIF is not a file upload. We read our test message back with conversations.history, and the GIF was an image block that points at GIPHY's servers:

{
  "text": "Thanks for the review",
  "attachments": [{
    "fallback": "shared a GIF",
    "blocks": [{
      "type": "image",
      "image_url": "https://media4.giphy.com/media/L9Q2rzzBHrfv4a1y4h/200w.webp?...",
      "alt_text": "Thank U GIF",
      "title": {"type": "plain_text", "text": "GIF"},
      "image_width": 200,
      "image_height": 168,
      "image_bytes": 50576,
      "is_animated": true
    }]
  }]
}

So the GIF is a 200 px wide animated WebP of about 50 KB, loaded from GIPHY each time someone views the message. The message carries no file, so a picker GIF does not use your workspace's file storage. The "GIF" label above it is the block title. A GIF you upload yourself is different: Slack stores it as a file.

Use the /giphy command

Before the picker, GIFs in Slack came from the GIPHY app and its slash command. It still works if your workspace has the app:

• Type /giphy and a word, for example /giphy high five, and press Enter.
• Slack shows a preview that only you can see.
• Click Shuffle for a different GIF, Send to post it, or Cancel.

If Slack says /giphy is not a valid command, the app is not installed. A member can request it from the GIPHY page in the Slack Marketplace, and an admin approves it. Admins can also set the app's content rating in its settings.

Upload your own GIF

Drag a .gif file from your computer into the message field, or click + in the message field and choose Upload from your computer. On a phone, tap + and pick the GIF from your photos or files. Slack plays uploaded GIFs in the conversation like picker GIFs.

To share a GIF you found on the web, copy its link from GIPHY or Tenor and paste it into the message. Slack shows the GIF under the link unless you turned off previews in Preferences, Messages & media.

Make a GIF emoji for Slack

A GIF can also become a custom emoji that anyone in the workspace can use in messages, reactions and statuses:

Click the smiley face icon in the message field, then Add Emoji.

Click Upload Image and choose your GIF.

Give it a name, such as party-parrot, and click Save.

Slack shrinks every emoji to 128 by 128 pixels. A GIF that is still too large after that shrink is refused with "This image is a bit too big, even after resizing". Slack's help center says up to 50 frames, but in our upload test a 60-frame GIF kept all 60 frames. The numbers are in how to add custom emoji to Slack, which also covers who can add emoji. To shrink a GIF that Slack refuses, use the Slack emoji resizer.

Make your own Slack GIF with a free GIF creator

A Slack GIF creator turns a picture, a GIF or a few words into an animated GIF that Slack takes as an emoji. Two free ones are below. For a GIF in a message, any GIF up to Slack's file limit works, so these matter most for emoji.

The Slack emoji maker, in the browser. Open the Slack emoji maker, pick Image to emoji or Text to emoji, and drop in a PNG, JPG, GIF or WebP. Crop it to a square, tick Remove background if it sits on a plain color, and pick an effect such as intensifies, spin, party or bounce. Each effect thumbnail shows the size of that GIF. With the sample frog the nine effects came out between 24.4 KB and 90.9 KB, all 128 by 128. Check the preview at 16, 22 and 32 pixels, then download the GIF. The file never leaves your computer. For a photo, the crop and size steps are in make a Slack emoji from a picture.

Claude's slack-gif-creator skill. Anthropic's public skills repository has a skill named slack-gif-creator. Claude draws each frame with Pillow from a description such as "a green dot that pulses", then saves the GIF with the skill's GIFBuilder. In Claude Code you install it with:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

We ran the skill's code on 7 October 2026 (repository commit 683bc88, Python with Pillow, imageio and numpy). This draws a pulsing green dot:

import math
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw
from core.gif_builder import GIFBuilder
from core.validators import validate_gif

builder = GIFBuilder(width=128, height=128, fps=10)
for i in range(12):
    frame = Image.new("RGB", (128, 128), (255, 255, 255))
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(frame)
    r = 45 * (0.8 + 0.2 * math.sin(i / 11 * 2 * math.pi))  # pulse
    draw.ellipse([64 - r, 64 - r, 64 + r, 64 + r], fill=(34, 197, 94))
    builder.add_frame(frame)

builder.save("emoji.gif", num_colors=48, optimize_for_emoji=True)
ok, info = validate_gif("emoji.gif", is_emoji=True, verbose=False)
print(ok, round(info["size_kb"], 1), "KB", info["frame_count"], "frames")

True 4.0 KB 10 frames

The skill's validate_gif passes an emoji on its width and height only. We saved 60 frames of random pixels at 128 by 128 and it printed True 1354.2 KB 60 frames, for a file ten times Slack's 128 KB guideline. So check the size yourself before you upload:

ls -lh emoji.gif   # stay under 128K for an emoji

No GIFs option in Slack

• No GIFs tab in the smiley menu. The GIF picker is off for the workspace. It was off in our new Free workspace without anyone turning it off. An owner or admin turns it on in Admin, Settings, Settings & permissions, Attach a GIF: tick Enable the GIF picker and click Save. We reloaded Slack after saving, and the tab was there. On Enterprise plans the setting is under Organization Settings, Attach a GIF. Turning it off does not stop people from uploading GIF files or pasting GIF links.

• /giphy is not a valid command. The GIPHY app is not installed, or an admin removed it.

• GIFs do not move. Animation is turned off in Preferences, Accessibility. Turn it back on to see GIFs and animated emoji play; every other cause is in Slack GIF not playing.

• The link shows no GIF. Link previews are off in Preferences, Messages & media. All the preview settings are in how to turn off link previews in Slack.

Every size limit, for GIFs in messages and GIF emoji, is in Slack GIF size limit.

FAQ

Does Slack support GIFs? Yes, on every plan, including Free. The GIF picker sits under the smiley face icon in the message field once an admin has turned it on, and uploaded GIF files play without it.

Is GIPHY free in Slack? Yes. The built-in picker uses GIPHY, and the GIPHY app for /giphy is free.

How do I send a GIF in a Slack thread? Open the thread, click the smiley face in the thread's message field, and use GIFs the same way.

Can I add a GIF to my Slack status? Only as an animated custom emoji. Add the GIF as an emoji first, then pick it as your status emoji. A GIF profile photo does not animate: when we uploaded a 12-frame GIF as our profile picture, Slack kept only the first frame.

Can admins turn off GIFs in Slack? They can turn off the GIF picker and remove the GIPHY app. Uploading a GIF file still works.