Animated GIFs are the best way to bring static images to life. They convey the message and information easily and in a better manner as compared to different image formats (JPEG, PNG). They are interesting, funny, can be self explanatory and meaningless all at a time. The best part about them is how they communicate and are used. But they sometimes they can be disruptive and really annoying. I personally don’t like when these animations auto play without permission. Also they eat up loads of bandwidth leading to a slower page load. But the good news is that we can stop these auto-playing GIFs from our web browser. So, if you are not in love with GIFs, you can simply disable them and speed up page loading.
Here’s how you disable GIFs from autoplaying:
1. Discontinue GIFs from playing automatically on Google Chrome
Google Chrome is the widely used browser in the world. It is really easy to use it and the vast selection of the extension it offers makes it even better. Extensions add practicality to Google Chrome, for this purpose we are again going to use a extension. The best extension you can use is GIF Jam.
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The name is self explanatory, it will display first frame of any GIF on a web page but won’t allow it to load. This does not mean that cannot see a GIF if you want to, by simply disabling the extension and refreshing the page, you can view the GIF.
img src: beebom
If you are okay with auto playing of GIFs but worried about the streaming time, you can use an alternate extension GIF delayer (download). This extension will display the GIFs on a webpage when they are fully loaded. This way you can see complete GIF at one time without any wait time.
2. Discontinue GIFs from auto playing on Mozilla Firefox
As we used extension in Chrome similarly we can use an add-ons in Firefox for the same purpose. You can download and install Toggle Animated GIFs extension (download).
With this extension you can use keyboard shortcuts to enable and disable GIF. Hit Ctrl+M keys together in the current tab to play or pause the GIF. To restart the animation press Shift+M.
To disable the GIFs forever from autoplaying, you can change the browser configuration.
To do so, use the following steps:
- Launch Firefox and type “about:config” in the address bar. Press Enter key and hit the “I accept the risk!” button.
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- In the search bar,type “animation”. Select “image.animation_mode” and double-clickon it.
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- Type “none”in the new pop-up window and click on “OK”. Refer to the attached screenshot for better explanation.
img src: beebom
Click okay and all GIFs will stop from auto playing. To restore default settings replace the text “none” with “normal” as explained earlier.
3. Block GIFs from autoplaying on Opera
Not only Chrome and Firefox have the extension, Opera too has extension which will disable GIFs from autoplaying. It is called GIF-blocker (download). Once installed, to enable/disable click on the icon. After it is enabled, the GIFs on any web page will be altered by GIF-blocker icon.
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To view the GIFs disable the extension and reload the page.
4. Stop GIFs from autoplaying on Internet Explorer
You do not need to install an extension as Internet Explorer has an in-built feature. To enable it, click on the “Tools” menu then select “Internet Options”.
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Here in the new window move to the “Advanced” tab, and then scroll down to the “Multimedia” section inside the “Settings” panel.
Now, uncheck the option “Play animations in webpages” this will disable GIFs from autoplaying.
You need to restart Internet Explorer to apply changes.
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The alternate way is to press “Esc” key.
5. Stop GIFs from autoplaying on Safari (Or Not!)
MacOS High Sierra update has changes Safari browser a lot, you can now block videos, but this doesn’t stops GIFs from autoplaying. To stop them, you need to install the Deanimator extension (download). But this is an old extension without any updates, so you can try and see if it works. If it doesn’t work then its your bad luck as there is no other way to disable GIFs from auto playing in Safari.
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Wrap Up
GIFs are indeed the best thing added to the images for a new and attractive look. But, over usage of anything is harmful, so is with the GIFs. As they interrupt while working and visiting a webpage, it’s necessary to disable them from autoplaying. This will decrease the page load time as less data will be consumed. Currently there’s no proven way to do this on the Safari and Edge browser in Windows 10. The extension discussed are a handy and quick way for getting the distraction out of your way.