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I wish that the .gif files would only show the first frame and never do any animation.

Also, I'd like this to work automatically (i.e. having to hit Esc as in Firefox is not enough).

Is there a way of doing that in Chrome? I'm on a dev channel so I don't mind if it's an extension.

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oh man this drives me crazy too! Why can't they support [ESC] like every other browser? –  Jeff Atwood Aug 31 '09 at 12:36
Yeah. I'd love this to be automatic, too -- like FlashBlock. I can't think of more than five occasions where the animation actually served some (good) purpose. –  Tomas Sedovic Aug 31 '09 at 14:45
Actually I wish all browsers would support something like this option: stop animated gifs (and flash) by default but make it possible for the user to tell if the gif is an animated one or not, and provide a way to start the animation (or the flash) manually (maybe a clicking on the gif). In short, stop animated gifs and flash by default but with graceful degradation. Remote Desktop Connection users and anybody who's annoyed by seizure inducing ads would be glad to see this feature realized! –  RamyenHead Mar 24 '10 at 6:47
You need to drop that and use Opera –  random Jun 17 '11 at 20:06
Love uberhumor.com except for those animated GIFs posts. –  Augustus Thoo Apr 29 '12 at 15:05

9 Answers 9

up vote 25 down vote accepted

Apparently there are now the

Chrome extensions. Or perhaps the Stop gif animations on escape user script?

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There is an issue for that in the tracker: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3690

And a feature request in WebKit: http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23945

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You can't, basically. Not without using one of the options that require tiresome manual intervention.

"Pause Pause Pause!" stops GIF animations but is otherwise fundamentally broken -- it will, for example, get you blacklisted from Google searches due to excessive network activity or some such (I didn't debug it, but I sure got a lot of CAPTCHAs every time I tried to use Google!)

"Paused!" does not have that problem, but that seems to be largely because it doesn't actually seem to do anything at all. GIFs still animate merrily away.

This seems unlikely to change any time soon. It's already nearly two years since you asked this question, and there is still no reliable automatic solution in sight. The Chrome bug is idling because WebKit does not support the necessary features. The WebKit bug has basically not been touched since 2009. The simple fact of the matter is this: you can use Chrome, or you can stop animated GIFs automatically, but not both at once. Sorry.

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  1. Have another tab open in your browser while you’re surfing, (if you don’t already).

  2. Click the other tab with your mouse, then click back to your original tab that had the animated gif.

a. This only stops the gif animation so that you can read without distraction. When you scroll your browser or click the page, the gif will start animating again. This is a temporary hack, until Google adds this functionality or a plugin is written.

b. You must use your mouse to click another tab and then click back on the tab you are trying to stop gif animation in. You can’t use the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl]+[Tab].

Source :http://n0ns3quitur.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/stop-animated-gif-images-in-google-chrome/

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Yeah, I've found that. But as you pointed out, this isn't automatic and is just a temporary hack. Funnily enough, a few versions back, Google introduced this as a bug -- that all gifs stopped moving. Pity they "fixed" it later on... –  Tomas Sedovic Aug 17 '09 at 11:17
I guess the new version of chrome ( they might be fix this bug) –  joe Aug 17 '09 at 11:21
That depends -- it wasn't what I was asking for. But I did not downvote you. You still answer my question in a "no, you can't have that" way. –  Tomas Sedovic Aug 17 '09 at 13:35
Doesn't work in Google Chrome –  Pavel Chuchuva Dec 30 '09 at 4:07

Some notes at the Google Chrome Help -- Flashblock for Chrome

Here is a jQuery reference for people who want to try writing their own chrome extensions.
Using jQuery to build Google Chrome extensions

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Blocking flash does nothing for animated GIFs. –  kmarsh Aug 17 '09 at 18:34

The "Pause Pause Pause!" extension was not working for me.

So I created a fork of it called "Paused!". Comments welcome.

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went_back_to_firefox says that your extension doesn't stop animated gifs for them. –  ThomasW Jan 29 at 1:29

Gif Jam (Animation Stopper)

This extension worked for me. Unlike most other extensions, it permanently disables gif animation (no need to press Esc or other keys). Here is how it works:

Http request to GIF images will be intercepted and replaced with a version containing only the first frame of the image sequence.

Source code: GitHub

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All those extensions are broken now—but I finally found one that works!! It's called GIF JAM. You can find it at the Chrome Web Store (free). What a relief!

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One possible Way to stop gif animation is to press Alt+Spacebar, Esc to remove dropdown menu, Alt to resume.

Seems to work in the Google Chrome browser (Version 28.0.1500.95 m) (Windows XP) (08/16/2013).

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