gifski

To build the library for iOS manually:

1. Add the target: rustup target add aarch64-apple-ios
2. Build the library: rustup update && cargo build --lib --release --target=aarch64-apple-ios

The static library will be created at ./target/aarch64-apple-ios/release/libgifski.a. You can then add this to your Xcode project.

To reduce the file size of your generated GIFs, use the following strategies:

• Dimensions: Use --width and --height to make the animation smaller. This has the largest impact.
• Overall Quality: Use --quality=N (where N is a number, e.g., --quality=80) to lower the baseline quality.
• Lossy Quality: Use --lossy-quality=N (e.g., --lossy-quality=60). Lower values make animations noisier/grainier but reduce file size.
• Motion Quality: Use --motion-quality=N (e.g., --motion-quality=60). Lower values cause smearing or banding in frames with motion but reduce file size.

You can install gifski using several methods depending on your operating system and preference:

• Homebrew (macOS/Linux): brew install gifski
• Rust/Cargo: cargo install gifski (requires Rust 1.63+)
• Pre-built executables: Download from the releases page.

To build the Gifski app in Xcode, you must first install Rust, SwiftLint, and the Xcode command line tools:

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
brew install SwiftLint
xcode-select --install

To build a dynamic library and generate a pkg-config file, use cargo-c.

rustup update
cargo install cargo-c
# build
cargo cbuild --prefix=/usr --release
# install
cargo cinstall --prefix=/usr --release --destdir=pkgroot

By default, gifski does not decode video directly. To enable this feature, you must have ffmpeg and libclang installed with their respective C headers in your system include paths (e.g., libavformat-dev, libavfilter-dev, libavdevice-dev, libclang-dev, clang).

Compile with the following feature flags:

cargo build --release --features=video
# or
cargo build --release --features=video-static

Once enabled, you can run: gifski -o out.gif video.mp4

To build the CLI tool from source, ensure you have an up-to-date Rust installation via rustup.

1. git clone https://github.com/ImageOptim/gifski
2. cd gifski
3. cargo build --release

The resulting binary will be located in ./target/release.

To use Gifski as a library in your C/C++ project, build it using Cargo:

cargo build --release --lib

This produces:

• target/release/libgifski.a (Static library - Recommended)
• target/release/libgifski.so/dylib or gifski.dll (Dynamic library)

To build for iOS:

rustup target add aarch64-apple-ios
cargo build --release --lib --target aarch64-apple-ios

The gifski command-line tool converts video files or sequences of PNG images into high-quality GIFs. You must specify an output destination using the --output (or -o) flag. If you want to write to stdout, use "-" as the output path.

Input Formats:

• Video: A single video file supported by FFmpeg (requires the video feature enabled).
• Images: Multiple PNG image files (sorted by name by default).
• Y4M: A .y4m file.

Note on Input Order: By default, input files are sorted. Use --no-sort to use the files exactly in the order provided.

If the Gifski system service is not functioning correctly, you can inspect the logs by running an instance of Finder with the -NSDebugServices flag targeting the Gifski service identifier.

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder -NSDebugServices com.sindresorhus.Gifski