Make GIFs On Facebook: Company Rolling Out GIF-Making Tool For iOS App

Facebook recently added support for adding GIFs in the comments section, but it looks like the company wants to take another step further with its Messenger app. It was discovered that the latest update to the Facebook app has added the ability to make and get GIFs the smartphone’s cameras.

The ability to make GIFs directly on the Facebook Messenger app was first discovered by The Next Web.

How To Get, Use And Make Gifs On Facebook Messenger

Users should be able to access the Facebook’s camera by swiping right from the News Feed. There should be a GIF option located at the top right next to “normal.”

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Creating GIFs with the Facebook camera appears to be a bit of a mixed bag, as pointed out by The Verge. Users can only create short GIFs that can last for only a couple of seconds. There are also different frames and filters available that can add a bit more excitement to the GIFs. This also includes the AR lenses.

Although the addition of this new GIF tool is neat, it does have one major issue. GIFs created on the Facebook app can only be shared as a Facebook story or as a Facebook post. It can’t be sent out to other services as a GIF.

Saving created GIFs to the user’s phone will simply turn it into a short looping video. That seems fine if users want to share it as a video on Instagram, but there’s seems to be no way to actually save it in the .gif format.

The new GIF tool for the Facebook app seems to be only available for the iOS version of the app. Also, it looks like only a few people have it at the moment, which suggests that Facebook is slowly rolling out the new feature.

The company did release a software update today, so users should check if they’ve already downloaded version 132.0 of the Facebook iOS app before trying to access it. If you don’t have it on the app yet, it’s best to just simply wait for it to become available.

For Android smartphone users, it seems like they’re not getting the feature yet. It’s possible that the GIF tool for the Facebook app is launching first on iOS devices, with Android following at a later time. Again, it does seem like Facebook wants to roll this new tool out gradually.

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Last month, Facebook launched native support for GIFs on the comments section. The company sourced its GIFs from its partners Giphy, Tenor and Disney. “We know people love communicating with GIFs on Messenger, and we’re also making it easier to use GIFs on Facebook,” the company said at the time.

Since Facebook appears to be further embracing the format, it does seem logical for the company to apply it on its own app in some form or another. Hopefully, the company will continue to improve the GIF tool over time, making it possible to actually create longer GIFs that can be shared on other services.