On an iPhone, tap + in a Messages conversation, then #images to search for a GIF or Photos to send one you saved. On Android, open the GIF tab in your keyboard, or tap the image button in Google Messages to attach a GIF file. If yours arrives as a still picture, skip to why a GIF arrives frozen; it’s nearly always the message type, not the GIF.
iPhone: search for a GIF
Apple’s Messages has a GIF search built in, called #images.
- Open Messages and tap a conversation, or tap the compose button and pick a contact.
- Tap the + button next to the text field, then tap #images.
- Tap Find images, type a word like birthday, and tap search.
- Tap a GIF to drop it into your message, then tap the send arrow.
If #images isn’t in the list, it may not be offered where you live. Apple lists 13 countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, India, Singapore, the Philippines and Japan. Your keyboard also has to be set to a supported language and region, under Settings → General → Language & Region.
To keep a GIF someone sent you, touch and hold it in the conversation and tap Save. It goes into Photos.
iPhone: send a GIF you saved or made
A GIF from a website, or one you made yourself, has to reach Photos (or Files) first, and it has to stay a real GIF on the way.
- In Safari, touch and hold the GIF and tap Save to Photos. A file you downloaded instead lands in the Files app, in Downloads: open it there, tap the share button and choose Save Image.
- In Messages, open the conversation, tap +, then Photos.
- Find the GIF. Photos sorts animated files into their own collection, Media Types → Animated, which helps when your library is big.
- Tap it and send.
Grid thumbnails often look still. Open the GIF full screen before you decide it saved wrong. A screenshot of a GIF, on the other hand, is a single PNG frame and will never move, so always save the file itself.
You can also copy and paste: touch and hold a GIF in Safari or in another conversation, tap Copy, then touch and hold in the message field and tap Paste.
Making your own is the fun part. A line that types itself out (“running 10 min late”, “happy birthday, Sam”) gets more of a reaction than another stock GIF, and the typing text GIF maker does it in Safari: type the words, tap Download GIF, then save it from Files as above.
Android: search with your keyboard
On Android the GIF search mostly lives in the keyboard rather than the messaging app, so the same steps work in Google Messages, Samsung Messages and most chat apps.
- Open a conversation and tap the text field.
- On Gboard, tap the emoji key, then GIF. On Samsung Keyboard, tap GIFs in the toolbar above the keys (tap the three dots to expand the toolbar if you don’t see it).
- Browse or search, tap a GIF to add it, and tap send.
Samsung’s help says GIFs and stickers sent from its keyboard are turned into a multimedia message automatically, which matters for the frozen-GIF problem below. If the keyboard toolbar is missing entirely, open the keyboard’s settings and switch Keyboard toolbar back on.
Android: send a GIF file you have
In Google Messages (the default on Pixel phones, and the app Samsung now points Galaxy owners to):
- Open the conversation.
- Tap the Image button on the right of the text field.
- Pick the GIF. Files you download in Chrome go to your Downloads folder, so look there if it isn’t in the recent strip.
- Optionally tap HD or HD+ to choose the quality (HD+ sends at full resolution), then tap send.
Samsung Messages users: tap the Gallery icon to the left of the text box, or + for more attachment options. Don’t get too attached to it, though. Samsung’s US support site says Samsung Messages is discontinued on Galaxy devices running Android 12 or newer from July 6, 2026, and points people to Google Messages.
Why a GIF arrives frozen
Your phone picks one of three ways to send a message, and only two of them are kind to GIFs.
| Message type | How you can tell | What happens to a GIF |
|---|---|---|
| iMessage | Blue bubbles, iPhone to Apple device | Full-quality media over Wi-Fi or mobile data; plays |
| RCS | “RCS message” in Google Messages’ text field; green bubbles on iPhone | High-resolution media over the internet; plays |
| SMS/MMS | Green bubbles, no RCS label | Goes through the carrier, which compresses it; may arrive still or blurry |
MMS is the usual culprit. Google’s Messages help says carriers compress MMS, and Android’s own carrier settings default to a 300 KB message size cap and 640 × 480 images, which each carrier overrides with its own numbers. Nobody publishes those numbers in one place, so treat 300 KB as the safe floor. A 2 MB GIF has to be squeezed hard to fit under a cap like that, and what arrives can be blurry or stuck on one frame.
RCS fixes most of this, but only when everyone in the conversation has it. Google’s help says RCS chats turn on only when all participants have RCS, and messages fall back to SMS/MMS otherwise. On iPhone, Apple says RCS needs iOS 18 and a carrier that supports it. So an iPhone texting an Android phone can go either way depending on the two carriers, which is why the same GIF plays for one friend and freezes for another.
The other causes are on the receiving end:
- On an iPhone, Settings → Accessibility → Motion → Auto-Play Animated Images controls whether GIFs in Messages and Safari play by themselves. If it’s off, every GIF sits still until tapped.
- The file was never animated. Some sites show a looping video that looks like a GIF, and saving it gives you a still or an MP4. Screenshots are always still.
- You’re looking at a thumbnail. Open it full screen first.
Make a GIF that survives a text
If the person you’re texting is on a basic phone, an old Android or a carrier without RCS, I’d build the GIF for MMS rather than hope: under 300 KB, no wider than 640 pixels, and a few seconds long. Text-only animations are good at this because flat colour compresses well. A two-line typing GIF from our maker came out at 75 KB when I exported one at 600 × 80 for this article, a fraction of what a clip from a film weighs.
If you need to caption a GIF before sending it, the guide to adding text to a GIF covers that on iPhone and Android too.