Slack GIF Not Playing? Turn On Allow Animations
Check Allow animations in Preferences, Accessibility. We tested a GIF that plays once, the animations-off view, and the workspace GIF picker that is off by default.
If a GIF or animated emoji is not playing in Slack, the animation setting is almost always off. On desktop or in the browser, click your profile picture, choose Preferences, then Accessibility, and under Other display options check Allow animations. Slack renamed this box: older guides call it "Automatically play animations in Slack". One box covers GIFs, animated custom emoji, and reactions and effects in huddles. Profile photos are the exception: Slack stores an animated GIF photo as one frame, so no setting makes it play, as our GIF profile picture test shows.
If the box is checked and a GIF still stops after one play, the file is saved to play once. If you cannot find a way to add a GIF at all, the workspace GIF picker is off, which is the default in the workspace we tested. Both fixes are below, with what we saw in a real Slack workspace on 4 October.
Turn Slack animations on or off
Desktop app or browser:
- Click your profile picture.
- Select Preferences, then Accessibility.
- Under Other display options, check Allow animations to play GIFs and animated emoji, or uncheck it to stop them.
The change applies at once. When we unchecked the box, both GIFs in our test message turned into still images with a play button, and Slack swapped each file for a first-frame PNG (the image address changed from _360.gif to _deanimate.png). Clicking the play button on one GIF played that GIF only, inline; the others stayed still.
iPhone, iPad and Android: Slack's help center puts the switch under Preferences, Animation & Haptics, Allow Animated Images on iOS, and Allow animated images & emoji in Preferences on Android. We did not test these on a phone. The phone setting is separate from desktop, so a GIF can play on your laptop and stay still on your phone.
A coworker who says your GIF does not move is looking at their own setting. You cannot make a GIF play for someone else.
Slack GIF plays once and stops
Every GIF file decides whether it loops. A loop block inside the file (the NETSCAPE2.0 extension) says "repeat"; a file without it plays once. Slack does not change this. We made two 10-frame GIFs that count 1 to 10, one with the loop block and one without, and posted them in the same message:
Ten seconds after the page loaded, the looping GIF was still counting and the play-once GIF sat on its last frame. Slack's preview thumbnail kept the file's loop setting. To make a play-once GIF loop, re-save it with a loop count of 0, which means forever:
# ImageMagick: -loop 0 writes a loop-forever block
magick input.gif -loop 0 looping.gif
# gifsicle does the same
gifsicle --loopcount=forever input.gif -o looping.gifWe ran the ImageMagick line on our play-once file. The output gained the loop block (NETSCAPE2.0, loop count 0), and after we uploaded it, Slack showed 7, 10 and 4 in three screenshots, so it looped. For a custom emoji, delete the old one and add the fixed file under the same name; old messages then show the new image. To make a looping animated emoji from scratch, the free Slack emoji maker exports GIFs that loop.
No GIF button in Slack: the workspace GIF picker
Slack has a built-in GIF search powered by Giphy, but an owner or admin has to turn it on. In the workspace we tested it was off: the Emoji button in the message box opened only emoji, and the workspace setting allow_native_gif_picker was false.
To turn it on, a Workspace Owner or Admin opens Admin, Settings, Settings & permissions, expands Attach a GIF, checks Enable the GIF picker and clicks Save.
After we saved it, the same Emoji button opened a picker with two tabs, Emoji and GIFs, and the GIFs tab searched Giphy. We turned the setting off again after the test.
Without the picker you can still upload a GIF file with the Attach button or drag it into the message box. All the ways to send one are in how to add a GIF in Slack.
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Other reasons a Slack GIF is not moving
How to stop GIFs from autoplaying in Slack
Uncheck Allow animations in Preferences, Accessibility. GIFs and animated emoji then show as still images with a play button, and you can play any one of them with a click. To hide one large image instead, click the arrow next to the file name to collapse it. To remove the GIF search for the whole workspace, an admin unchecks Enable the GIF picker; people can still upload GIF files.
FAQ
Why is my custom Slack emoji not animated? Allow animations is unchecked, the file is a PNG or a one-frame GIF, or the GIF has no loop block and stops after one play.
Does Slack have GIFs? Yes. Slack has a Giphy GIF picker inside the Emoji button, but an admin must turn it on under Attach a GIF. Without it you can still upload GIF files.
Do Slack GIFs play on mobile? Yes, if the phone's animation switch is on. It is separate from the desktop setting.
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