orrinfacey01: Playing animated gifs saved in the ios Camera roll

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Playing animated gifs saved in the ios Camera roll

The CompuServe GIF format is my favorite image format. Sure you only get up to 256 colors and sure it's old, but it has a lot to like: a powerful compression algorithm, simplicity, and of course, animation.

This hint will show you how to view animated gifs saved to your camera roll from uiwebviews (pictures synced to your iPhone via iTunes are converted to jpeg, so it won't work for those).

Simply:

Open the Photos app.
Open the camera roll album.
Tap the gif you would like to view.
Tap the Action button in the lower left corner (it looks like an arrow jumping out of a box).
Select 'Email Photo.'

The email composer will come up, with the animated gif in the body. When you are done watching just hit cancel, and delete the draft message (unless you wanted to send it to someone else of course).

[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. It makes sense since Mail wou ...