How To Record Mac OS Screen & Create Gif images? [App]

The History of the GIF has been an interesting one.

Unlike the trends of fashion, where every once in a while an old fashion style comes back and becomes popular, the GIF has had a different story.

With the Inteet and it’s allied products and concepts when something is out of fashion, it never comes back.

The GIF has been a very rare exception!

The GIF was popular in the early 2000’s when the format was widely used. As the new millennium progressed, lesser people used it and everybody considered the GIF a dead medium.

via GIPHY

But, with memes gaining popularity, the GIF also made a resurgence. This could be attributed to the fact that GIF’s are an extension of the Meme.

Why should you use GIFs in your content marketing?

• GIFs can be used to make something funny. And Funny sells on Social Media
• GIF can uncomplicate something that would take a lot of words to explain. GIFs are great for tutorials

Companies who have a strong content strategy in mind can use GIFs. GIFs are a great way to make quick and fast content that will still be considered quality content.

via GIPHY

Companies like Scoopwhoop, Buzzfeed and other sporting related content channels all use GIFs. In fact, many sport focused blogs have exclusively started posting GIFs instead of full-fledged videos because of the ease of watching (One less click) and faster loading time.

It’s more likely that a person watches GIF’s more than videos.

In the above Image, they used 22 GIFs that has got them 2400 shares!

Now that we’ve established why GIFs, let’s get to the how.

How do create .gif file yourself on Mac?

If you are looking for extremely popular GIFs that are commonly used by everybody on the Inteet then look no further than Giphy. This is the most exhaustive collection of GIFs that are based on pop culture references.

For those of you who want to create their own version of GIFs for simplifying a process for your parents or making a tutorial for your website or to make your own original GIFs to share with your friends then you need Gifox

Get Gifox from here.

Gifox is a Mac-based application that costs only $2.99 that helps you make very quick GIFs. Once you download the application, it sits on your Mac toolbar at the top. For your reference, I’ve marked it in below screen:

Once you click on that, you get a box like the one below with the following options.

Option 1 – Take a GIF of a Selected Area

Just like taking a screenshot, with Gifox you can select the area that you want as a GIF. All you have to do it drag and select the area and you are ready to record your GIF.

Option 2 – An Entire Video or Screen

Sometimes you want GIFs of entire screens. With this option, you can take a GIF of an entire screen. So whichever is the active application on your desktop, that will be taken for creating the GIF.

Option 3 – Folder of GIFs

This folder icon takes you to the location where all your GIFs are stored.

Option 4- Gifox Site

Right now this button takes you to the Gifox.io website, whereas in the future I’m sure it will be an option to share your GIFs to GIF based websites like Giphy.

Option 5, 6 and 7 – Feedback, Preferences, and Settings

These are pretty self-explanatory. Option 6 has all the settings where you can change the FPS while recording and playing that control the quality of the GIF. You can also control the number of times the GIF loops before it stops and a few shortcuts as well.

Here is a screenshot of Gifox in action. My attempt at making a gif of a fight sequence with Gifox.

And that’s how simple it is to create GIFs on the Mac using Gifox.

Download Gifox

What other tools or browser add-ons have you used to create .gif from screen recording? Share with us in the comment section below.

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