Question
What's the best way to record your screen and save it as a GIF?
I've used GifBrewery for years to make GIFs from screen recordings, but just realized their app is currently unsupported (UPDATE: Actually, as @AndyDentPerth mentions below, turns out GifBrewery is still online, just on a different site post-acquisition. So it's still a great option—along with all the other tools others shared below for recording Gifs).
What's the best way to record your screen and save it as an animated GIF now?
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You haven't lived until you switch to CleanShot X, which will let you select an area of your screen, and then choose to record it as a video or GIF, directly.
I use this feature everyday.
Nah man, CleanShot X is the BEST screenshot/screen recording tool I've ever used, and I've used them ALL.
And I don't even use its cloud sharing capabilities.
That’s quite the endorsement. I’ll let you know how it holds up this week!
I used to use Cloudapp and liked it. Then I tried Cleanshot and switched to it. Never looked back.
It fits perfectly my workflow as I tend to almost always drag and drop my screenshots / gifs (in Slack or emails).
And it’s got a cloud service to host image and videos.
The UI is awesome, and the team actively works on it.
What else could we ask for?
Can you easily send screenshots to Dropbox? Right now I love the convenience of taking a screenshot and having the URL copied in my pasteboard.
You can set the target Export Location to a Dropbox folder and that would achieve something close to what you want. You'd have to find another way to get the link from Dropbox though.
There's no native integration — yet.
Thanks. I'll have to try but maybe their overlay + cloud can replace my current workflow, it might be just as convenient.
Yeah, +1 for CleanShot X. I also love their annotation tool. Super simple to mark something up.
I'm very happy with ScreenFlow's annotation - I use it not just for screen recordings but as a full video editor allowing me to easily drop in clips and add transitions, callouts etc.
I like this one https://gifox.io
Available on Setapp as well.
This is one feature that might best CleanShot X...
That was what I loved about GIFBrewery—when you export your GIF, you could set its frame rate and speed, both of which can greatly reduce file size. Though it always recorded at native resolution + frame rate, and so you had to set the options you want before exporting each time.
This takes the other approach, but with a failsafe. So basically, you set your default preferences, and it'll always record and convert that way.
However, if you cancel conversion, then CleanShot will can save the original video recording and you can optimize it as you prefer!
That's what I'd used years ago on Windows—great to hear it's still working well!
I like open source app, here is one: https://getkap.co
It is limited to macOS. The OS itself has great built-in screen recorder, but Kap saves some few seconds of uploading video → converting to gif → downloading the result with free online converter.
@Jumpshare does native gif recording although I wouldn’t say it’s an alternate to gif brewery
I'm a GIPHY Capture man, myself https://giphy.com/apps/giphycapture
I've heard good things about CloudApp as well https://www.getcloudapp.com/features/gif-creation
licecap is pretty confusing at first, but it does the job. Record some part of your screen and save it directly as a gif. Make sure the file name you pick to save as ends in ".gif" to avoid a bug that makes it otherwise not save at all.
What makes you say it is unsupported - it is working fine for me on the latest macOS. I recommend it regularly and just used it to create the latest gifs on https://www.touchgram.com/
Unfortunately, Zoho Sites doesn't support embedding even tiny mp4 movies so I've stuck with using these gifs to show off bits of interaction.
One of the things I love about GifBrewery is that I can play around with sizes and speeds to dramatically reduce file size. It also lets you see how well color optimisation settings work. I will always start with video recordings (either ScreenFlow or native macOS capture) then want to tweak my gifs. It's the difference between sticking a 5MB gif up on our site and a similarly-appealing 1.3MB gif.
I'd recently gone to download GifBrewery again, and was surprised to see it's no longer in the Mac App Store or available for download on the developer's site, so had to pull my copy out from an older backup that thankfully was still around. So while GifBrewery still works—and hopefully will for some time—it's not an option if you haven't downloaded it already.
And you're right, it's the options to customize output size that made me love GifBrewery. I'm trying out CleanShot X on @chrismessina and others' suggestion, and the good thing is it lets you set recording size and more before recording your screen which might lead to a quicker gif recording workflow.
I'm confused.
I just launched it and followed their web link - is definitely still live at https://gfycat.com/gifbrewery - are you using a pre-acquisition link?
That site also includes a working App Store link https://apps.apple.com/au/app/gif-brewery-3-by-gfycat/id1081413713?mt=12&app=apps&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
That's wild ... weird. You must be right that I had hit pre-acquisition links, but I'd Googled for the app name, clicked the App Store link on their site, and neither worked a few days ago.
That's incredibly odd.
Welp. It appears my rumor of GifBrewery's demise were greatly exaggerated! Sorry for the false alarm! 😅
Interesting discussion. I was looking for a gif capture recently and tried a bunch of them - including Giphy and Gifox - but was unsatisfied with the output size and quality.
Recording using Mac's built-in tools and then converting using Gifski seems to give the best results.
Looking for a better way to plan remote meetings across time zones, and keep up with events. What software is doing that best today?
In that case I haven’t lived yet 😅
I’ll go correct that!
In general, I find macOS/iOS’ screenshot tools nearly perfect for my needs, and then edit further in Preview/Photoshop/et al (though I did like the Napkin app for Mac, and wish it was maintained). GIFs are the sticking point, and perhaps it’s time to switch to something better for them all.