How to Stop GIFs From Auto-Playing in Your Browser

We've all been to web pages where animations start auto-playing without permission. It's a crime against humanity and should exist stopped. The upside is that if they're animated GIFs, at least they're silent. But they're ordinarily also big downloads, which tin can be a real drag on your connection while you expect. It's best to prevent the animations happening without your permission.

Information technology's not always a straightforward thing similar stopping autoplay videos, since an animated GIF is an image file—it just happens to have multiple frames that play in sequence. Hither'southward how to put a stop to the show, browser past browser. (We even placed an animated GIF on this very page downwardly nether the IE section that y'all tin employ to test things out. We're just that nice.)

Firefox

The folks at Mozilla were smart to incorporate an option to plow off auto-play animations in Firefox.

Type "virtually:config" in the accost bar.
Click "I have the risk!" when information technology comes upwardly.
Notice "image.animation" using the search box (just type "anim")
Double-click "epitome.animation_mode."
In the side by side box, type ether "once," so the animated GIFs only get one chance to play, or "none" so they never can.

The downside here is you lot tin can't always get the file to play later without reverting the settings.

Firefox Image Animation Mode

If you prefer a software solution, download the SuperStop extension for Firefox. With a click of Shift+Esc, groundwork animations on a folio should finish.

Chrome

There's no built-in facility to kill animated-GIF playback on Google'due south browser. You'll need an extension from the Google Spider web Shop to cease them.

Gif Jam (Blitheness Stopper) volition show only the first frame of whatever GIF that tries to load.
Blitheness Policy lets you set up a policy for how to handle a GIF: allow it run in one case (and only once) or disable auto-play altogether.
Gif Stopper lets you stop all the animations on a folio with a stroke of the Esc cardinal (leaving a blank white infinite where the paradigm used to exist).
Gif Delayer won't stop them playing but does delay them until all the GIFs on the page are fully loaded, so yous're not waiting around, watching stuttering, half-started animations.

Chrome Gif Jam

Opera

Disabling animated images in Opera used to exist part of the settings, simply they took information technology out. Your best bet is to instead use Google Chrome extensions like those listed above.

To install them, you lot must showtime run the Opera improver called Download Chrome Extension while using Opera. It lets you so go into the Google Chrome Web Shop and download pretty much all the existing Google extensions. You'll have to accept the extra step of going into the extensions page of Opera and clicking Install to arrive work. Gif Jam (Animation Stopper) worked similar a charm.

Internet Explorer

Finally, a browser that does it right. (It'due south not frequently you say that virtually IE.) When animated GIFs load in IE, simply hit the Esc key and they cease moving. Nothing disappears, they only stop. If it's a folio total of them, you may accept to hit Esc more than in one case, equally the push button won't work until the GIF is fully loaded on the folio. Yous have to reload to go the GIFs moving again.

If yous want to stop blithe GIFs forever:

Become to Internet Options (via the Tools menu "gear" at the upper right)
Select the Advanced tab
Scroll down to Multimedia to uncheck "Play animations in web pages."
Y'all'll demand to restart your browser and your computer for this to accept effect and go through the whole process to re-showtime animated images.

IE turn off Animations

You'd remember the same things would work for Microsoft Edge in Windows 10. But y'all'd exist wrong. I couldn't find any easily identifiable option to shut off GIFs.

Safari

Not a lot of great options to terminate the desktop Safari from animative GIFs, though in that location is an old extension named Deanimator that may do the flim-flam.

Twitter and Facebook

Twitter has one of the best approaches to animated GIFs on the desktop, which are everywhere on the site: if y'all don't like it, click information technology, and it stops. Click it again to start the move all over. Turning off video autoplay in the settings volition also turn off ALL autoplay of blithe GIFs—you'll be able to tell them by the play button in the centre, and the overlayed discussion "GIF" in the lower left.

Nosotros're putting @NASA_Orion spacecraft's Launch Abort System to the test today. Watch on @Facebook Alive at 2:45pm ET: https://t.co/cJ3zfqI4rt picture show.twitter.com/RuXXZErcnX
— NASA (@NASA) June 15, 2022

Just in fourth dimension for the GIF'southward 30th birthday, meanwhile, Facebook opened upward animated GIF comments to the entirety of the services' billions of users.

It does the same thing as Twitter; click a GIF and information technology stops moving. To turn them all off, go to Settings on the desktop, look for Video to the left, and under "Auto-Play Videos" set information technology to Off.

That stops videos and blithe GIFs, but you lot can still click them to activate. Go back into settings to plow auto-play dorsum on, or just pick "Default" to go whatever the poster intended. This but works on the desktop.

Near Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith has been writing well-nigh computers, the cyberspace, and applied science professionally for 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. He was previously on the founding staff of publications like Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine, all of which are now defunct, and information technology'southward not his fault. He spent 6 years writing exclusively almost Wi-Fi, only don't ask him to fix your router. At PCMag he runs several special projects including the Readers' Choice and Business Selection surveys, and yearly coverage of the Fastest ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, plus regularly writes features on all tech topics. He's the author of two novels: BETA TEST ("an …