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Gifski

Free video-to-GIF converter with unusually good output

Price: Free

Open sourceNothing to buy; source published

Get it Website

Checked on apps.apple.com, the page Get it opens.

The catch

It converts video you already have — recording the screen is another app's job

The full picture

Gifski is a converter, not a recorder, so you still need something to capture with; the screen recorder built into macOS is fine for that. The current 3.0.6 build requires macOS 26 or later, and older Macs have to stay on an earlier release. Output is GIF only, and large or long clips will still produce big files no matter how good the palette handling is — this is a limitation of the format rather than the app.

Replaces
Paid online GIF converters, CloudConvert subscriptions
Developer account
None needed

What it looks like

Gifski: The full Gifski conversion window with a unicorn clip loaded: video preview, the frame filmstrip with trim handles set, and the whole control panel — Dimensions dropdown (480 x 480 Original), Width/Height fields, FPS slider at 16, Quality slider, 'Estimated size: 1,4 MB', Cancel and Convert buttons.
The full Gifski conversion window with a unicorn clip loaded. Mac App Store (id 1351639930)
Gifski: The empty Gifski window sitting over the desktop, showing its 'Drop a Video' state with the striped app artwork, while a Unicorn.mp4 file is dragged onto it.
The empty Gifski window sitting over the desktop, showing its 'Drop a Video' state with the striped app artwork, while a Unicorn.mp4 file is dragged onto it. Mac App Store (id 1351639930)
Gifski: The Gifski completion pane: the finished Unicorn.gif with its thumbnail and 1,9 MB size, and Copy / Share / Save As… buttons.
The Gifski completion pane. Mac App Store (id 1351639930)
Gifski App Store screenshot 1 of 3
Gifski App Store screenshot 2 of 3
Gifski App Store screenshot 3 of 3

3 screenshots published by the developer on the Mac App Store.

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

Most GIF converters quantise the whole clip to one 256-colour palette, which is why a screen recording of a dark UI comes out banded and a video of anything with a gradient comes out looking posterised. Gifski gives each frame its own palette and then blends between them, so the result is recognisably the video you fed it. Drag in a file, set a width, a frame rate and a quality level, watch the preview, export.

The practical loop it fits into: record with Command-Shift-5, drop the .mov onto Gifski, trim off the part where you were finding the mouse, and paste the GIF into a pull request. Nothing to sign into, no upload step, no file-size limit imposed by a service.

It is free and MIT licensed, and Sindre Sorhus has been shipping it for years, so there is no price story to worry about — only the macOS requirement. Version 3.0.6 wants macOS 26, which rules out older machines until you hunt down an earlier build from the GitHub releases page.

Do not expect it to record anything, and do not expect miracles on a 40-second 4K clip: GIF is an inefficient format, and the honest answer for anything long is to post an MP4 instead.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • People who have worked through several video-to-GIF tools repeatedly say nothing else comes close on output quality
  • Several describe the same reason for reaching for it: Google Docs, Slides and GitHub will accept an animation only as a GIF

Details

Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
macOS 26
Developer
Sindre Sorhus
Source
github.com
The Gifski page at sindresorhus.com
The developer’s own page. sindresorhus.com, captured 22 Sep 2026

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