How to make GIFs from YouTube videos: 10 simple steps

Well, you’ve seen a cool moment in a YouTube video, and you liked it. And now you want to turn it into a GIF. This process is much easier than it might seem. GIFs extracted from all sorts of sketch shows or sitcoms look especially great. The whole process can be broken down into ten simple steps.

The first step is to open a YouTube video and copy the link. You can do this any way you like using any browser. 

Next, you need to go to the Giphy.com website and sign up for an account there. You don’t need any special editor or Photoshop to GIF videos using this resource. Having an account would be enough. 

To create an account, you only need to provide your email. You will also need to set a password. Well, there are other converters, but many users consider this one to be the simplest and most convenient.

Then you need to find the “Create” tab on Giphy.com. There is a download button next to it. 

The next step is to paste the link to the YouTube video into the blank space in the tab. The field is titled “Add Any URL.” You can also create GIFs from videos stored on your local PC in pretty much the same way.

After the link is inserted, the service automatically takes you to the GIF-making tools panel. Here you can select time marks and duration of the GIF. How does it work? Select the part of the video you are going to GIF and set the loop length. You can easily find your time marks directly on YouTube and then just move the selection tool wherever you want.  

Next, you need to cut the video to the length you like and click the “Continue” button. Let’s say you’ve jumped to 2:16 in the video and then set the GIF duration to 1.1 seconds. 

The next step would be to add a funny caption or any other decoration. There is a particular field to enter the text. Animation, font color, font size, drawings, and much more are also selected here. 

Next, scroll down the window and click the “Continue to Upload” button in the lower right corner of the page. 

The next step is to upload your GIF. You’ll find the “Upload to Giphy” button at the bottom of the screen. You can also add some tags so that other users can quickly found the GIF. 

To save the image, right-click on it. Select “save image as” in the context menu. After that, enter the new name in the field and get the GIF immediately downloaded to your PC. It can be used wherever this format is supported. Besides, Giphy makes it possible to share GIFs to social media like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and others.  

It also should be noted that Giphy is far from the only GIF-making service on the Internet. 

There are lots of other GIF converter tools available, but this one is just my favorite. Let’s take a look at some other means for making GIFs from YouTube videos (and other stuff) that you can try. Such similar services are briefly covered below. 

For example, you can take any YouTube video and put “GIF” at the beginning of the link to find yourself in a special GIF editor. A similar tool can be found on GIFs.com.

Also, Giphy provides a Mac app called Giphy Capture. It can be used to take pictures and further convert them into a GIF file. This tool is an excellent option for working with content that is not posted on YouTube.

Another service is GIFRun, allowing users to generate GIFs out of any stuff, including TikTok.

Imgflip has its GIF maker too, but its interface is not as easy as in other available options. However, it allows you to play around with the width and frame rate. 

Yet another service, Make A GIF, is extremely easy to use. It has separate tabs for working with social media like Facebook-to-GIF.