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Add Text to GIF

Put text on an animated GIF: the classic meme look, white capitals with a black outline over the picture, or a plain bar outside it so nothing gets covered. The text goes on every frame at once, the timing is left alone, and you see the result playing before you download it. Everything runs in your browser.

Style

White capitals with a black outline, written over the animation. The classic.

Text size10%

A percentage of the animation's width, so the same setting looks right on a small GIF and on a big one.

Text colour

The outline is always black, which is what makes white text readable on any background.

Write something in the top or the bottom box to continue.

How to add text to a GIF

  1. 1

    Open your animation

    Drag the GIF onto the box, click to pick one, or paste the address of one that is already online. Animated WebP, APNG and AVIF work too.

  2. 2

    Choose the style

    Meme writes over the picture in white capitals with a black outline. Text bar adds a plain strip outside the animation, so the text hides nothing — that is the look used on social media.

  3. 3

    Write the text

    A line at the top, a line at the bottom, or both. Long text wraps by itself, and you can set the size as a percentage of the width so it fits any animation.

  4. 4

    Apply and download

    The captioned animation appears playing at its real speed. If the size or the wrapping is not right, change it and apply again — the file is not decoded twice.

What makes it different

  • The outline is drawn properly

    The black outline goes down before the white fill, not after. Done the other way round — which is the usual mistake — the stroke paints over the edge of each letter and eats half its weight, so the text comes out thin and grubby.

  • The size is relative, not in pixels

    Forty pixels is enormous on a 200-pixel-wide GIF and tiny on an 800-pixel one. The size is a percentage of the width, so the same setting looks right on any animation you throw at it.

  • The bar covers nothing

    In bar style the canvas grows: the strip is added outside the picture instead of being painted on top of it, so you do not lose part of the image to your own caption.

  • The animation keeps its rhythm

    Only the pixels change. Every frame keeps the duration it had, including animations where each frame lasts something different.

  • Nothing is uploaded

    The animation is decoded, drawn on and rebuilt in your browser. No file reaches a server, there is no watermark and there is no account.

Supported formats

Animated GIF, animated WebP, APNG and animated AVIF go in; an animated GIF comes out. The meme font is Impact where your system has it — that is Windows and macOS — with narrow fallbacks elsewhere, so nothing has to be downloaded to draw the text.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the meme text in capitals?
Because that is the format: Impact in capitals with a black outline is what reads as a meme. If you want normal casing, use the text bar style, which keeps what you type.
Can I put the text anywhere I like?
Not from this tool, which is built for captions at the top and the bottom, the two positions memes actually use. For text placed with a click anywhere on a frame, open the animation in the GIF Splitter, which is the full editor.
Does the text appear on the whole animation?
Yes, on every frame. A caption that shows up halfway through is not what anyone wants from a meme. If you do need text on only some frames, the editor lets you pick which.
What happens with long text?
It wraps by itself into as many lines as it needs, and in bar style the bar grows to hold them. A single word wider than the animation is left on its own line rather than being cut in half.
Will the file get bigger?
A little, usually. Text adds sharp edges and new colours, which compress worse than flat areas, and in bar style the canvas is taller. If size matters, run the result through the GIF compressor.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. It is decoded and rebuilt by your own browser. The only thing that touches a server is opening a GIF by URL, because a browser cannot read files from another website directly; even then the bytes pass straight through and nothing is stored.