I haven’t been thrilled with many of the additions and enhancements to YouTube over the past year or so, which have resulted in an inexplicable and gratuitous amount of unused white space and made it more difficult than ever to find interesting videos related to the stuff I like watching, but there’s one update I can get on board with: the new GIF creation tool.
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In order to create a GIF, you need to sign in to YouTube, find a video with the feature enabled, click the Share option below the video and then navigate to the GIF tab. A small preview will appear, and you’ll be able to decide which portion of the video you want to turn into a GIF with either a slider or a text box denoting the begin and end times. You can even put text at the top and bottom of the GIF.
The feature only appears to be active for a few select videos throughout the vast videoscape of YouTube at the moment, but don’t be surprised to see an influx of GIFs in the coming weeks as YouTube continues to expand the availability of the feature.
Andy Baio first discovered the feature’s existence on the PBS Idea Channel, while CNET noted GIFs can be pulled from the popular Epic Rap Battles channel as well. And don’t forget — you can still create GIFs from any video on YouTube by using the third-party GIF YouTube website trick.
