Gifox 2

Gifox exists for one job: the three-second loop that goes into a bug report, a README or a Slack thread, where a video would be overkill and a still image would not explain the problem. You draw a box or pick a window, record, and get a GIF small enough to attach without anyone complaining. The controls that matter are the ones most converters hide — frame rate, dithering, loop behaviour — and they are right there, so you can trade a little smoothness for a file a third of the size.

Pause and resume is the feature that quietly justifies the price. You can stop mid-recording, get the next window ready, and carry on, which means you rarely have to re-do a take because something was slow to load.

Where the money goes: $14.99 unlocks Pro in this major version. The developer's own lifetime page already talks about Gifox 3, so treat this as buying version 2 rather than buying forever, unless you go for one of the $150-and-up founding tiers.

If you only need a GIF occasionally, the free tier's ten seconds plus a watermark may genuinely be enough, and Gifski will convert a QuickTime recording for nothing. Buy this when GIFs are a habit.