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FediTips has moved!

Did you know you can use an animated GIF as your profile picture or profile header? As long as it's under 2 megabytes you can upload it just like any other profile image.

GIFs may or may not play automatically for you, depending on your settings. You can set this by logging in through your server's website and going to Settings > Auto-play Animated GIFs

⚠️ Do not use rapidly flashing GIFs as these can be dangerous for people with certain neurological conditions such as photosensitive epilepsy.

@feditips
How do animated gifs in profile avatars or headers go with #ScreenReaders for #SightImpaired users? Is there any issue?
#Accessibility

@adminkirsty

There's a general issue with all avatars and headers on Mastodon (both still and animated), which is that they don't have any descriptions. Their alt text is just the name of the account, and there's no way of editing it.

One workaround is to describe them in your profile text, but that uses up a lot of your character limit. (On post attachments descriptions don't affect the character limit.)

@feditips Yes you can, but they don't play on the official android app, even with the setting active.
It would be interesting to know how many users are on mobile vs desktop to get some traction on fixing this (albeit minor) issue.

EDIT: Logging in on my phone's mobile browser in mobile and desktop mode makes no difference, my profile image is still static.

@feditips well this is something I don’t want to see more of 🤣😅

@scottytrees

The same instructions also let you switch them off! 😳

@feditips Can animated SVGs be used? Actually, can SVGs be used at all?

What about other kinds of animated images, like animated PNGs (aPNG, or even MNG)?

@saria

The only file types for profile images are PNG, GIF and JPG. GIF and PNG can be animated too.

SVG can't be used.

@feditips If anyone wants to use this GIF I made of Tom Selleck as Waluigi, go ahead.

@feditips
In #fedilab I have disabled animated gifs in avatars. I really don't like them

@feditips "Yeah, yeah, but your [developers] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."