Of all the mediums out there used to communicate a thought or phrase, perhaps none is as perfect as the animated GIF. Grabbing just the right scene from a show or movie can get your point across like nothing else, and finding the right GIF when you need it most is one of the great pleasures of 21st century digital living.
All too often, however, there’s a quick GIF you want to use for a given situation (one that really hits on the inside joke you are alluding to), and you just can’t find the perfect clip you’re looking for. Ever been there? I know I have countless times; and I’ve also been the guy scrounging for the right tool, searching everywhere for the right clip to make the GIF I need in a particular moment, only to watch that moment pass on by as I try to stitch something together in time to land the punchline. It can be frustrating.
A useful GIF making tool is coming
Thankfully, at least when you are on your Chromebook, that won’t be an issue any longer. Thanks to a find by @cr_c2cv on Twitter, it looks like an earlier find by 9to5 Google is now coming to fruition in the Canary Channel with a simple GIF recorder coming to ChromeOS. Using the built-in, existing screen recorder feature, you’ll soon be able to highlight a portion of the screen, hit record, and have an animated GIF at your disposal right away. It really is that simple, and I’d grab a screen recording of the process for you if was possible to screen record the screen recorder, but that isn’t exactly a thing.
With the Enable GIF recording in screen capture (#ash-capture-mode-gif-recording) flag enabled in the Canary Channel of ChromeOS, you will now see the options pictured above when you go to screen record a portion of the display. Simply select record GIF and after you stop the recording, a GIF will be saved that can immediately be shared out wherever you need it.
The feature seems to work pretty perfectly, and I can’t imagine it will take long before we see this feature trickling down to the Stable Channel for general availability. All we really need at that point is the ability to drop text over GIFs in the Media Gallery app and Chromebooks would become GIF-making monsters. For now, however, just having the ability to capture the main GIF is going to be pretty awesome, and I can’t wait until this is available for all users at some point hopefully in the coming weeks.
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