How To Add .Gifs To TikToks To Liven Up Your FYP

While internet users are pretty divided on how to pronounce the word “gif” — some say it like the peanut butter brand Jif, while others pronounce it like the first part of the word “gift” — most can agree that the looping visual clips are a beloved form of media. Gifs often offer the perfect bite-sized response for when words don’t suffice and reference our favorite lines from movies or scenes from TV shows. Getting roasted in your group chat and don’t know how to recover? There’s a gif for that. Want to celebrate your loved one’s achievements by commenting a goofy loop of someone dancing on their status? There’s one for that too. Finally, a recent update from TikTok and Giphy rolled out that allows users to post entire gifs directly into their videos because a picture truly is worth a thousand words.

Up until recently, users could only share gifs on TikTok in the form of stickers that didn’t always offer the necessary length to show the full plot of an entire gif. Now, a recent update makes it possible to add your favorite gifs into your TikTok videos for an added touch to your For You Page.

Whether you’re looking to add a gif sticker or an entire clip, here’s everything you need to know about using gifs on TikTok.

How To Add .Gif Clips to TikTok Videos

If you have a favorite gif saved to your camera roll you’ve been dying to edit into a TikTok video, you may have already tried and failed to post the gif directly from your camera roll. Unfortunately, if you try to upload a gif directly from your camera roll, it will upload to TikTok as a still image, and the movement loop is what makes gifs so impactful to begin with.

However, with TikTok’s new update, users will be able to browse from Giphy’s entire gif collection and post individual gif clips to their videos. As Pocket Lint reports, the update became available to Android users in early April 2022 and will soon debut to iOS users in mid-April. The update has a new “Library” feature, which will allow users to choose from their own camera roll or Giphy’s collection to find the gifs they want to include.

To add a gif clip to your TikTok, you’ll open up your Camera tab as you normally would. (The center plus (+) sign button on your bottom tab.) At the bottom of the vertical sidebar, Pocket Lint says that a new Library button will appear when your version of the app has been updated. From here, you’ll open up a library of Giphy clips — which you can scroll through or search for something specific in the top search bar. From there you’ll trim the clip as you normally would and add it to the rest of your video during the editing stage. Post, and, voila, you’ve uploaded your first gif to TikTok.

How to Add .Gif Stickers to TikToks

If you want to add some gif fun to your TikTok in the form of a sticker, this existing process is pretty similar to adding a gif sticker to your Instagram story. All you have to do is record a TikTok as you normally would in the Camera tab, click the red check mark button when you’re done shooting, then click “Stickers” at the far right of your bottom editing tab.

Here, you’ll be presented with a variety of stickers — both moving gifs and still images. To search specifically for gifs, click “Search GIFs” in the top search bar. Tap your preferred gif stickers, place them where you wish on your TikTok, and click “Next” and “Post” when you’re done.