YouTube adds automatic GIF creation tool to share options

Ever feel like the internet has gone full circle? After living through the 90s and early 2000s when high quality videos on the internet were just a distant dream, even though we can now stream in 4K, the whole world has gone GIF crazy again.

Pandering to this trend, YouTube has added an intriguing new “GIF” option to the sharing menu on a number of popular videos – presumably testing it ahead of a broader rollout to everything.

The new tool lets you select contiguous segments of videos up to five seconds in length, which you can chop out and turn into a GIF. You can even overlay text on to the images, instantly creating memes.

When GIFs are created, YouTube even gives you both a direct link to the file or a YouTube-style embed code – as well as a plethora of sharing links.