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Facebook’s built-in camera does GIFs now

Facebook’s built-in camera does GIFs now

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They’re kind of cool, but mainly meant for use in Facebook (which isn’t)

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Facebook has been building out the camera in its main app for a while now, and today is adding a new GIF function. As first spotted by The Next Web, you can access the feature by tapping the camera icon in the top left of the app. Just swipe right to start making quick GIFs.

The function is a bit of a mixed bag. It works well enough, and you can add a bunch of different frames, and filters (including some cool Prisma-esque style transfer effects). But you can only share the resulting GIFs on your Facebook story or as posts on your Facebook page. You can’t send them to other services, and you can only save them as videos. Which means they’re not much use outside of Facebook.

A screenshot of Facebook’s camera showing the GIF option at the top.
A screenshot of Facebook’s camera showing the GIF option at the top.

You can see how the GIF option looks in the Facebook camera above. (Also, for fans of meta: this is a screenshot of the Facebook app in which I’m taking a photo of a video of a GIF on my computer which I originally took on the Facebook app. Too many screens in our lives, folks, too many screens.) Anyway, it seems Facebook is rolling this out slowly, as not all Verge staff could access the new feature. Have a look for yourself, and maybe GIF your cat if you feel like it.