I was familiar with Giphy’s iPhone app, but today’s 2.0 update makes it something worth keeping on my device for the sheer utility of finding any GIF I want quickly.
Giphy is, quite possibly, the leading destination for GIFs on the Internet. The service is integrated with a variety of third-party apps and it’s become a staple of our Slack conversations thanks to the often perplexing, sometimes amazing /giphy slash command. In many ways, Giphy is the GIF backend sating our daily appetite for stupid Internet memes and reactions. Especially when I’m on Slack, I expect Giphy to be my worthy GIF assistant in times of need.
The Giphy app for iPhone now has a revamped interface that simplifies the process of finding GIFs. In the main screen, you can view the newest and most trending GIFs on the Internet for the current day. Auto-play can be turned off on slow connections, and I’d like to point out the delightful animation of the back button (top left corner) when navigating back and forth between the initial screen and individual GIFs.
At the bottom of the screen, a list button next to the omnipresent search box lets you view categories of GIFs so you can continue browsing specific subsets of GIFs. These include smiles, LOLs, crying, cats, Taylor Swift, One Direction, and a whole range of other pets and human emotions. The Giphy database doesn’t disappoint here, with some of the most absurd, creepy, and hilarious collections of GIFs I’ve seen around.
Finally, GIFs can now be shared with built-in shortcuts for Messages, Mail, Messenger, and Twitter, as well as the iOS share sheet. If you’ve ever dreamed of automating doge GIFs with Workflow, now you can. Or, you can use the excellent Linky for iOS to share animated GIFs on Twitter with a tweet sheet that is vastly superior to Twitter’s one.
As a huge fan of stupid GIFs (with a hard G), Giphy 2.0 for iPhone is easily my favorite surprise this week. The share sheet integration is a good addition to share GIFs with any app on iOS, and, for me, it removes the need for a dedicated GIF keyboard (which are typically slow to load and don’t return as many results as Giphy). You can download the app for free on the App Store.
