DEV Community

Christian Heilmann
Christian Heilmann

Posted on • Originally published at christianheilmann.com

5

Save Twitter GIFs as MP4 without any add-on or service

When you want to save a GIF from Twitter, the interface plays a cruel joke on you. If you context-click the GIF you get a menu that states "Copy GIF address".

Copy GIF address context menu on Twitter

All it does though is copy a link to the tweet with the GIF in it, which is pretty pointless. Under the hood Twitter also converts any GIF to MP4 because it is a much more effective file format.

Knowing this, the easiest way to save the GIF is to open DevTools, go to the Console and type/copy:

window.open(document.querySelector('video').src)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

This opens the GIF as a video in a new tab and you can save it there as shown in this screencast:

saving a GIF from Twitter

Of course there are a myriad of web services, Twitter bots and other things that do the same for you and also in more advanced fashion, but I think it is always a very good idea to not trust any service that offers to save protected content from the web for you. I've seen far too many malware browser extensions in that arena.

Image of Timescale

Timescale – the developer's data platform for modern apps, built on PostgreSQL

Timescale Cloud is PostgreSQL optimized for speed, scale, and performance. Over 3 million IoT, AI, crypto, and dev tool apps are powered by Timescale. Try it free today! No credit card required.

Try free

Top comments (0)

Sentry image

See why 4M developers consider Sentry, “not bad.”

Fixing code doesn’t have to be the worst part of your day. Learn how Sentry can help.

Learn more