Tip: Pause/Restrict/Disable Animated GIFs

Here is a handy tip for dealing with a site that has animated GIFs, pressing ‘ESC’ key will pause animated GIF’s on a page. This works in both Firefox and Internet Exploiter.  Note: in order to ‘resume’ the animation you will need to refresh/reload the page. You can test this out with the image below:

Additional options via an about:config tweak:

  1. In a new tab type about:config in the address bar and press enter
  2. In the filter field type animation
  3. In the results listed double-click on image.animation_mode
  4. In the pop-up box type in one of the following:
    • none — will prevent image animation
    • once — will let the image animate once
    • normal (default) — will allow it to play over and over

Note: Once setting does not appear to work in later builds of Firefox 2 and does not work at all in Firefox 3.

Tip Source: CyberNet News

15 Responses to “Tip: Pause/Restrict/Disable Animated GIFs”


  1. 1 Sam Thursday, November 1, 2007 at 1:15 PM

    The ‘ESC’ key works great for me! Wish I’d known about that a long time ago. Thanks! :)

  2. 2 Julie S Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 10:18 PM

    Need help to get my gifs to animate.
    I checked the above and it is set to normal so it should animate, but gifs do not for firefox 2.09 nor my explorer 7.0.

    Any help would be appreciated.

  3. 3 shani steinberg Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 3:25 AM

    Well i just change my config for 1. thanks

  4. 4 matt Friday, January 25, 2008 at 8:43 PM

    Animatd GIFs in my firefox broweser run faster than IE. Any ideas?

  5. 5 H.S. Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 9:15 PM

    This may sound strange, but could you tell me the name of the person who created the animated gif in your entry, so that I know whom to credit on my livejournal userinfo?

  6. 6 Bob Friday, May 30, 2008 at 3:55 AM

    Is there a way to restrict the image.animation_mode setting to a specific domain?

    E.g. image.animation_mode = none
    for domain foo but

    image.animation_mode = normal
    for all other domains.

  7. 7 The Guru Friday, May 30, 2008 at 3:59 AM

    @Bob, interesting idea. I don’t know of any way at this point. I am not sure if it is something that could be possible via a GreaseMonkey Script or an add-on.

  8. 8 Brazilian php programmer Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 6:31 AM

    Firefox 3 users do in about:config

    image.animation_mode;none

  9. 9 Jesse Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 5:38 PM

    My Firefox won’t play gifs, it only shows the first frame, there’s no animation, is there anyway to fix it? I’ve tried the about:config, it’s set to normal.

  10. 10 Mark Phone Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 11:55 AM

    I looked at the picture 10 minutes, each man lived his life :)

  11. 11 Zareste Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 9:09 AM

    Very useful, especially when Firefox uses all that unnecessary CPU power for off-screen GIFs

  12. 12 Ngelina Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 5:46 AM

    you’re king, thanks for this! :)
    1-2 regularly visited sites were driving me mad: these anim gifs slowed the scrolling, etc down like hell.
    These animgif-heavy sites sometimes feel like when a 4 years old waves one of those swirly-sparkly-whatsitcalleds right in front of your eyes…


  1. 1 Firefox, bloccare il movimento delle immagini animate | Il blog che non c'è Trackback on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 1:38 PM
  2. 2 Fx 2.0 Tweaks Guide « Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog Trackback on Tuesday, January 1, 2008 at 12:49 PM
  3. 3 Truco: Como pausar animaciones GIF Novedades y ultimas tecnologias Estas viendo el articulo Truco: Como pausar animaciones GIF Trackback on Monday, May 18, 2009 at 11:51 AM

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