While WhatsApp has not yet found a way to search for gifs in the app, you can already send the animated images. In this tip, we’ll show you how this works (with a little help from the Giphy app).
Sending a WhatsApp gif, that’s how you do it
WhatsApp’s gif feature has long been at the top of the wish list of messaging users. Time and again the function seemed to be rolled out, but today the time has really come. If you now send a gif file, it will appear in the chat window with a ‘gif’ button on it. Tap this and the picture starts to move.
Sooner or later, WhatsApp (like its competitor Telegram) will undoubtedly add a way to search and send gifs from within the app itself. At the time of writing that is just not yet the case. This means that you will have to look up a poison yourself with another app. Not very efficient of course, but for now the only way you can send a WhatsApp gif.
Fortunately, there are plenty of iOS apps that let you search for gifs well. In this tip, we choose Giphy for that, perhaps the best-known and largest online database of GIF files. Giphy has its own iOS app, where you can search for a gif and then share it in a variety of ways. You can easily send a WhatsApp gif from this app.
This is how you search and send a WhatsApp gif
- Open the Giphy app and enter a search term
- Select a gif you want to send and tap it
- Below the animated picture is a bar with different logos, tap the three dots on the far right.
- Tap the square with an arrow pointing up and choose the WhatsApp icon
As soon as you tap the WhatsApp icon, the messaging app will open with a preview of the gif you are about to send. Just like with photos, you can add emoji and written text to send your gif. Then tap the blue arrow to send your creation. The WhatsApp gif function works on iOS, Android and the web version of the messaging service.