GIFwrapped

The iOS and macOS app for collecting and sharing
GIFs right from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

How do I save GIFs from Twitter?

Saving GIFs from Twitter is typically a big ol' pain... Twitter converts them to videos for a bunch of reasons, which is all well and good, but that doesn't help when you want to collect 'em. It actually makes it really flippin' difficult.

Fortunately, GIFwrapped takes care of the tricky bit for you, so all you need to do is tell it which tweet the GIF is attached to. You can do this straight from your Twitter app of choice, by sharing the tweet and using GIFwrapped's built-in share extension to grab the GIF and save it to your library.

Using the Search Tab

You can also use the tweet URL in GIFwrapped's search tab to download GIFs from Twitter, no problems at all. The quickest way to get the URL is to tap-and-hold the GIF itself (just lightly touch it, and hold your finger still until it shows up), which should give you a share sheet, regardless of which app you use. Alternatively, you can try one of the methods below.

Once you have the URL, switch over to GIFwrapped, paste the URL into the search tab, and hit Search. It'll look up the tweet, and list any GIFs it finds in it and any replies to it. From there you can save to your library, to Photos, or just share normally. Whatever floats your boat!

Twitter

  1. Find the tweet you want to get the GIF from.
  2. Press the icon that looks like a box with an arrow coming out the top.
  3. In the menu that appears, select the "Copy Link to Tweet" icon.

Tweetbot

  1. Tap the tweet you want to show the tweet menu.
  2. Press the icon that looks like a box with an arrow coming out the top.
  3. Select the "Copy Link" icon in the bottom row.

Twitterific

  1. Tap the tweet you want to show the tweet options.
  2. Open the extended menu by tapping the icon that looks like three dots (an ellipsis).
  3. In the menu that appears, select "Share...".
  4. Select the "Copy Link" icon in the bottom row.

Troubleshooting

Capturing GIFs from Twitter isn't foolproof, especially if you don't know the ins-and-outs of how Twitter works. So, if the GIF you want isn't coming back in the search results, there's a couple of things that could be the cause:

Private Accounts

Tweets from private accounts can't be accessed without being signed into an account that has permission to view the tweets (i.e. the account's followers). Because GIFwrapped doesn't have access to your Twitter account (and isn't able to let you sign into one), it's not able to download GIFs tweeted from private accounts.

Potentially Sensitive Content

Like with private accounts, GIFwrapped can't access GIFs attached to any tweets that Twitter has marked as containing potentially sensitive content. Because of this, it's unable to download these GIFs.

For more detail, see the dedicated explanation: Why can't I save GIFs from sensitive tweets?

Different Media Types

The distinction may not be super clear, but it's possible that the media attached to the tweet is a video, and not a GIF. GIFwrapped doesn't support downloading videos, which means that videos simply don't show up in the results. To further confuse things, you might get GIFs from replies to that tweet instead.

Most major Twitter clients label GIFs with a little label in one corner of the image (as seen in the example above), so odds are, if the media isn't labelled as a GIF, it's probably not a GIF (and thus, not supported).

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