Add an Animated GIF to a Gmail Email
If your office culture or social circle thrives on sending funny GIFs back and forth, you may find yourself wanting to embed an animated GIF into a Gmail message. But if you just copy and paste it in, the animation won't work, and if you add it as an attachment, your recipients will have to open it, which takes extra steps. So how do you embed a moving GIF directly into a Gmail email?
Steps
- Write your email. You know the drill here; log into your Gmail account, click Compose or Reply and Write an Email as you want it. Technically, you can take this step after you find your GIF; it's your choice, depending on your priorities!
- Find your GIF. Animated GIFs have become part and parcel of Internet communications. Millions of people have dedicated time and effort to putting together funny or otherwise entertaining animated GIFs. If you don't have one in mind to embed, just do a quick search. Try a query like funny gif or party gif or cat gif and you're bound to find one that sends just the message you're looking for.
- Save the GIF to your computer or find its exact URL. In order to embed the animated GIF in your Gmail message, you're going to need to save it, not just copy and paste it. Copying and pasting it will just paste a frozen image in, which is much less fun.
- You can embed the image using the GIF's URL, but this will only work if you have the exact image URL, not the link of the page where the GIF appears. You can get this exact URL by right-clicking on the image and selecting Copy Image URL. If you have trouble with this, your safest bet is to save the file to your desktop instead.
- To save the file to your computer, right-click on the picture and select Save Image As. Save it in a location you can access easily, like your desktop. Once you're done sending it, you'll be able to delete it.
- Click on the "Insert Photo" icon in Gmail. It looks like a mountain with a sun over it and is located in the toolbar at the bottom of the email you're composing. This will open a smaller window for selecting your image.
- Make sure that that the lower right-hand option labeled Insert images has Inline selected. Otherwise, your image will be added as an attachment, and recipients will have to open it to select it.
- Select your GIF. You have two main options that'll work for GIF embedding: You can pick Upload, if you saved your GIF to your computer, or Web Address (URL), if you know the exact URL of the image.
- If you pick uploading, drag and drop the saved GIF into the box, or click Choose photos to upload. Select your GIF, and click Open. The file should automatically be added to your email; if not, click Insert to confirm the upload.
- If you decide to use a web address, paste the exact URL of the image into the textbox. If the URL is right, a preview of the image should appear. Then click Insert in the window to embed it.
- Resize or move your GIF if needed. Click on the image itself, and it'll be highlighted by a blue box. From here, you can click and drag the corners of the box to the size you want it, or you can pick from Gmail's choices, including "Small," "Best fit," and "Original size." If necessary, you can also remove the image using the link that appears under the GIF.
- If you want to move the GIF, you can drag and drop it to a different section of the email, or move the text around it, if that's easier.
- Send your email! Once you've written your email, added your recipients, and have embedded your moving animated GIF, click Send to get your email on its way. You'll have your friends and coworkers giggling in no time.
