How to post a GIF on X (and where your saved ones went)

#Quick answer

How to post a GIF on X (formerly Twitter): open the composer, select the GIF icon, search the GIF library by keyword or browse the categories it offers, choose one, and post. To use a GIF file of your own, attach it with the photo icon like any other image. One GIF per post, it cannot share a post with other images, and the file cap is 5MB on mobile or 15MB on the web. Neither a GIF nor a photo counts against your character limit.

Last updated: September 2026

#TL;DR

The mechanics of posting a GIF have not changed in years. What changed in 2026 is everything behind the button: Google shut down the Tenor API on 30 June, X had been using Tenor to power its GIF picker, and the migration took people's saved and recently-used GIFs with it. If you came here because your favourites are gone or the search results feel thin, that is the reason, and it is not something you can fix in settings.

#Posting a GIF, per platform

The flow is the same on all three, with the buttons in slightly different places. All of this is from X's own help page on posting photos or GIFs (Wayback capture, 29 August 2026).

iPhone and iPad

1. Tap the compose button, or Reply on a post.
2. Tap the GIF icon in the composer.
3. Search by keyword, or scroll the categories X shows you by default.
4. Tap a GIF to attach it, add your text, tap Post.

Android

Identical: compose, tap the GIF icon, search or browse, select, post.

Web (x.com)

Same again. The GIF icon sits in the row of media buttons under the compose box, next to the photo and poll icons.

Sending your own GIF file

Skip the GIF icon entirely and use the photo icon, then pick the .gif file from your device. X treats it as an image attachment, subject to the same size caps and the same one-per-post rule.

On iOS there is a third route: a third-party keyboard. Long-press the globe icon while composing, switch keyboards, copy a GIF from it, then paste into the post field. X documents this as a supported way to add images, emoji and GIFs.

GIFs work in DMs too, with the same picker. If that is what you are actually after, how to send a DM on X covers the inbox rules that decide whether your message even lands.

#The limits worth memorising

Two of those trip people up regularly.

One GIF, and nothing else with it. X's wording is explicit: animated GIFs cannot be included in posts with multiple images, and you can send only one GIF in a post. So the "GIF plus screenshot" post you were planning has to become a GIF post and a reply, or a thread.

The mobile cap is a third of the web cap. A 12MB GIF you can post from a laptop will be refused on your phone. Either post it from the web or shrink it, and dimensions matter for how it renders regardless. Those numbers are in X image sizes.

#Why your saved GIFs vanished

This is the question actually driving traffic in 2026, and most pages answering it are still describing a GIFs tab that behaves differently now.

Google sunset the Tenor API. Its statement, quoted in 9to5Google's 30 June 2026 report: "As part of an ongoing effort to focus resources on enhancing our core products, we've made the decision to sunset the Tenor API on June 30, 2026." Integrations were fully decommissioned from 1 July. Tenor.com itself and Google's own products, including Gboard and Google Messages, kept working. Everyone else's GIF picker broke.

X was one of the biggest users of that API. According to the same report, X's head of product Nikita Bier confirmed the platform had migrated to an alternative source, and two visible side effects followed: recently-used GIFs were purged, and fewer GIF options appeared while posting. Discord, WhatsApp and Bluesky were hit by the same shutdown.

Which library X switched to has not been announced. So the practical guidance is unglamorous:

• Your favourites are not recoverable. There is no restore, no setting, no cache to clear.
• Search instead of browse. Typing a keyword into the picker pulls results directly and is now faster than hunting for a tab that may no longer be there.
• Keep the ones you use. If a specific GIF is part of how your account sounds, save the file to your device. Then you attach it with the photo icon and the picker's contents stop mattering.

That last habit is the only durable answer here. A picker you do not control can change again.

#When a GIF will not post

Five causes cover nearly everything.

It is over the size cap. 5MB mobile, 15MB web. The error is not always specific, so check this first.

It does not loop. X supports looping GIFs; one that plays through once and stops is displayed as a still image. Re-export with infinite looping.

You tried to combine it with photos. Not allowed. One GIF, alone.

GIF search is temporarily unavailable. X documents this as connection-dependent, and the workaround it gives is to upload a GIF from your phone's photo library instead.

The file is not actually a GIF. A .webp or .mp4 renamed to .gif gets rejected, and short clips exported as video need the video route and its own limits, covered in X video length.

#Accessibility, and one thing you cannot do

You can add a description to media on X, and doing it on a GIF that carries meaning is worth the ten seconds. How to add alt text on X has the steps and the catch: you cannot edit a description after the post goes out.

What you cannot do is tag people in an animated GIF. X's help page states plainly that tags cannot be applied to animated GIFs, so if you want someone attached to the post, put them in the text. How to tag someone on X covers the difference between a mention and a photo tag, which are separate mechanisms with separate visibility.

#Do GIFs actually help a post?

Honest answer: sometimes, and not for the reason people assume.

There is no published evidence that attaching a GIF earns extra distribution as a media type. What a GIF does well is compress a reaction into something people recognise instantly, which is why GIF replies collect likes. Likes from a reaction GIF are also the cheapest engagement on the platform, and they rarely turn into a follow, because nothing in the post told anyone what you know.

The pattern that does work is narrow: a GIF that carries information a sentence would carry worse. A three-second screen recording of a bug. A before-and-after loop. A chart moving. Those earn the attention the format borrows.

For replies, which is where most GIFs go, the ranking is worth understanding before you optimise for it, and how to reply to posts on X covers what actually gets a reply seen. A GIF is a fine way to close a friendly exchange. It is a poor substitute for having something to say.

#Bottom line

Select the GIF icon, search, pick, post. One GIF per post, no mixing with photos, 5MB on mobile and 15MB on web, GIF and JPEG and PNG only, and no character cost. If your saved GIFs are gone, Google's Tenor API shutdown on 30 June 2026 took them, and saving the files you rely on to your own device is the only fix that survives the next provider change.

And if the real bottleneck is that posting consistently takes more time than you have, X-Autopilot drafts and publishes from real Chrome on your own Mac, which keeps your session cookie on your machine rather than in a shared cloud service. That is a smaller detection surface than cloud tools, not a guarantee of anything: browser automation is not sanctioned under X's automation rules, and reading those yourself beats trusting any vendor's summary, ours included.