How to Make a Screen Recording GIF

Record the part of the screen you want to show, trim it to 20 seconds or less, and choose GIF from the scene’s menu. The GIF is made on your device and loops by itself wherever you post it.

Jump to the step-by-step guide

Online Screen Recorder

ReadyTurn on your camera, mic or screen below

Choose a recording source

Start a new scene from one source or combine screen and camera.

New scene

Turn on your camera or mic above

Why turn a screen recording into a GIF

A GIF plays by itself, loops, and needs no video player, so it works almost anywhere you can put an image. That makes it a good fit for a README, a help article, a bug report or a quick reply in chat, where a few seconds of movement explain more than a screenshot.

recorder.video records the screen, trims the clip and converts it to a GIF in your browser. You don’t need a separate converter or an upload: the GIF is built from the recording that’s already saved on your device.

How to record your screen as a GIF

Get the screen ready

Open the app or page you want to show and close anything unrelated. Make the window fairly small, so text stays readable once the GIF is scaled down.
Share just that window or tab

Click Screen and pick the window or tab rather than the whole display. Press C to turn the camera off if you don’t want your face in the GIF.
Record a short take

Press R, wait for the countdown, perform the action once at a steady pace, and press R again to stop.
Trim to the action

Select the scene and drag the yellow handles until only the useful seconds remain, 20 at most.
Download the GIF

Open the scene’s menu and choose GIF (short clip). The GIF is encoded on your device and saved with your other downloads.

GIF export settings and limits

GIF export uses fixed settings that keep files small enough to share:

recorder.video GIF export settings
Setting	Value	What it means
Length	Up to 20 seconds	The GIF starts at your trim start and stops 20 seconds later at most.
Size	At most 640 pixels on the longest side	Larger recordings are scaled down; smaller ones keep their dimensions.
Frame rate	12 frames per second	Enough for clicks and typing, and far lighter than full video.
Colors	Up to 256 per frame	Each frame gets its own palette, which suits flat interface colors.
Sound	None	The GIF format can’t hold audio, so the clip is silent.
Looping	Endless	The animation starts over as soon as it reaches the end.

When your trimmed clip runs past 20 seconds, a notice tells you the GIF covers only its first 20 seconds. The picture comes from the combined recording, so a camera bubble or background frame that was in the take will be in the GIF too.

There are no quality or frame rate controls to adjust. To change how the GIF looks, change the recording itself: the area you share, the shape of the frame and how much moves on screen.

Keep GIF clips short

A GIF stores every frame as a separate picture, so its size climbs quickly with length. Aim for one action per GIF, such as opening a menu, filling in a field or reproducing a bug, and keep it to a few seconds where you can.

Rehearse before you record. Know where you’ll click so the take has no hunting around.
Move the pointer slowly. At 12 frames per second, quick mouse movements turn into jumps.
Pause on the result. Hold still for a second at the end so viewers see what happened before the loop restarts.
Trim tightly. Play the scene with K and use I and O to cut dead time at both ends.

Record a small window or tab

Because the GIF is never more than 640 pixels along its longest side, a recording of a full 1920-pixel-wide desktop shrinks to a third of its size. Small text becomes hard to read at that scale.

Share a single window or a browser tab instead, and make it only as large as the content needs. On a high-resolution display the captured window holds more pixels than it appears to, so zooming the content in with Ctrl++ (Command++ on a Mac) helps text survive the scaling.

Under Size, choose Fit to source so the frame matches the shape of the window you shared. Drag Background frame in the Background menu down to 0% if you want the window to fill the GIF edge to edge.

When MP4 is better than GIF

GIF dates from the early days of the web, and for some clips a video file simply works better:

Longer than 20 seconds. Walkthroughs with several steps belong in an MP4, which recorder.video doesn’t cap.
Sound or narration. A GIF is always silent, so anything you explain out loud needs a video.
Lots of motion or color. Scrolling pages, video playback, photos and gradients look blotchy with 256 colors and make very large GIFs.
Smaller files. Modern video compression usually beats GIF by a wide margin on the same clip.

For a silent clip in video form, choose Video only in the scene’s menu to download it without the audio track. Many chat apps and issue trackers accept MP4 attachments and play them right in the page.

Tips for smaller GIF files

Turn the camera off. A moving face changes pixels in every frame, which GIF compresses poorly.
Use a still background. Pick a solid color in the Background menu and switch off Animate gentle backgrounds, so nothing around the window moves.
Stop motion that doesn’t matter. Pause animations, close video previews and hide anything that blinks or ticks.
Record less of the screen. Fewer pixels per frame means a smaller file, one more reason to share a window instead of the desktop.
Cut it shorter. Halving the length roughly halves the file size.

Some sites cap the size of image uploads, so check the limit where you’re posting. If a GIF comes out too big, trim off a few seconds or record a smaller area and export again.

Adding the GIF to docs, issues and chat

README files: commit the GIF to the repository and reference it like any other image, for example ![Demo](docs/demo.gif).
Bug reports: attach the GIF to the issue and write out the steps it shows as well, so the report can still be searched.
Help articles: place the GIF straight after the step it illustrates, with alt text that describes the action.
Chat: drag the file into the message box, and most chat apps will play it inline on a loop.

Recording questions

How do I turn a screen recording into a GIF?

Record the screen in recorder.video, select the scene and trim it, then open its menu and choose GIF (short clip). The conversion runs in your browser, and the file downloads when it’s ready.

How long can a screen recording GIF be?

Twenty seconds at most. The GIF begins at your trim start, so move the start point first if the part you want comes later in the take.

What size is the GIF?

No more than 640 pixels on its longest side, at 12 frames per second. A recording smaller than that keeps its original dimensions.

Can a GIF include sound?

No, the format has no audio track. Download the scene as an MP4 instead when the sound matters.

Is my recording uploaded to make the GIF?

No. Frames are read from the saved recording and encoded on your device, in a background worker so the page stays responsive.

Why is my GIF blurry or hard to read?

The recording was probably much larger than 640 pixels and got scaled down. Share a smaller window or zoom the content in, then make the GIF again.

Can I make a GIF on my phone?

You can make one from a camera recording on a phone, but not of the phone’s screen, because mobile browsers can’t share the screen with a website.

Should I use GIF or MP4 for documentation?

Use GIF for short, silent loops that must play everywhere, such as a README. Use MP4 for anything longer, anything with sound, or anything with a lot of motion, since it’s smaller and smoother.