GIFs are still going strong in 2018. Instagram has just added support for GIFs. You can’t post GIFs as actual posts. Instead, you can add GIFs to your Instagram story as stickers. They will be animated even if you’re sharing a photo and not a video. Here’s how to add a GIF to your Instagram story.
GIFs in Instagram are a new feature powered by Giphy. You don’t need to install the Giphy app or the Giphy keyboard however, you do need to update the Instagram app. The update is available for everyone worldwide and it’s available for both iOS and Android. Once you’ve updated it, you can add a GIF to your Instagram story.
Open the app and swipe right, or tap the camera icon at the top left. Take a photo, or pick a recent one from your camera roll. Tap the Sticker button at the top. It’s the one with a smiley face on it. This will open the stickers drawer. Look for the one with a search bar that says GIF.
You can see which GIFs are trending on Giphy or you can search for a GIF via the search bar. Tap the GIF you want to add. Like the static stickers, you can move the GIF around, and pinch to resize them. Tap the Share button and share the photo to your story, or send it to a friend.
You can’t add GIF stickers to your Instagram posts. It might sound appealing but the last thing you want is GIFs in your home feed. It would turn Instagram into a mess instead of a place for nice, visually appealing photos.
GIFs are a nice addition for Instagram stories especially if you don’t like using the AR masks which, unless you’re sharing a video, aren’t much fun. The GIFs are mostly there for users who prefer to share photos to their Instagram stories as opposed to videos.
You still have the other default Instagram stickers that you can use and you can add both static stickers and GIFs to a photo. Let’s hope Instagram doesn’t phase out the static stickers now that we have GIFs. A lot of other social media apps and chat apps have added support for GIFs, most come from Giphy, and they’re popular. If they’re popular enough on Instagram, the app won’t have much reason to support the existing stickers unless of course it wants them there just to rival Snapchat.
