Last Wednesday, the micro-blogging platform Twitter started rolling out native support for animated GIFs to its mobile apps for iOS and Android, as well as to its web interface available on Twitter.com.
Initiaily, the free iPhone and iPad app didn’t gain the feature at the time of the announcement as the firm needed more time to implement animated GIFs on backend side.
This morning, Twitter version 6.8 has surfaced in the App Store featuring – you guessed right – the ability to upload animated GIFs from your iPhone and iPad and view them rendered inline, right inside your timelines…
Native support means your animated GIFs are now shared through the same pic.twitter.com links as native image uploads, as opposed to having to use third-party animated GIF sharing services like Giphy.
Here’s an example tweet with the embedded GIF, via The Next Web writer Nick Summers.
It’s a GIF! http://t.co/MyGBncnuTZ
— Nick Summers (@nisummers) June 18, 2014
Just as the above animated GIF plays inline on your computer, updating to Twitter’s latest iOS app will render it right inside your timeline on the iPhone and iPad.
In addition to support for animated GIFs, Twitter 6.8 includes unspecified “minor improvements” and the following additions to #WorldCup:
- The #WorldCup Timeline is where all the action happens. In addition to Tweets from your network, you will see relevant Tweets from teams, players, coaches, press, venues, and celebs.
- Are you watching the match? Follow it on Twitter and take a peek behind the scenes. See Tweets about the match from teams, players, coaches, press, venues, and celebs from inside and outside the stadium.
- Put the # symbol in front of your favorite team’s country code to create a hash flag.
Twitter has said that animated GIFs are supported on the API level so it’s only a matter of time before your favorite third-party client supported these popular image files inline.
A post over at the Twitter Developers blog reveals that the service currently accepts animated GIFs of up to three megabytes in size.
Download Twitter 6.8 free in the App Store.
The universal app requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad running iOS 6.0 or later.
Twitter seems to have neglected its Mac app: the software hasn’t received an important update since last December.