APNG Converter

Move an animation between the three formats that carry one: APNG, GIF and animated WebP.

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What this tool does

APNG Converter hands your file to FFmpeg on the server and re-encodes every frame into the format you choose. The three targets are genuinely different animals rather than three wrappers around the same data: GIF reduces each frame to a 256-colour palette and a single transparent colour, APNG stores full-colour frames with a real alpha channel and compresses them without loss, and animated WebP stores lossy or lossless frames that usually land well below either.

Only three controls are exposed, and they do not all reach every target. Convert to picks the output format. Quality, from 40 to 100 with 80 as the default, is passed to the WebP encoder and to nothing else — the GIF path builds its own palette and never reads the number, even though the slider is shown when GIF is selected. Lossless appears for WebP alone, and switching it on stops the quality figure governing how much detail is discarded. APNG has no quality control, because its compression is lossless and there is nothing to trade away.

The GIF path resamples, and that is the limit to understand before relying on it. Output is fixed at 12 frames per second and 480 pixels wide, because this tool offers no frame-rate or dimension setting — a 30 fps source loses frames, and a source narrower than 480 px is enlarged to it rather than left alone. One 256-colour palette is computed across the whole animation and applied to every frame, so a clip that changes scene half way through has to share its colours between both halves. APNG and WebP output, by contrast, keep the source dimensions and the frame timing as FFmpeg reads them.

None of this can happen in a browser tab, because no browser ships an APNG or animated WebP encoder to call. Your file is uploaded over an encrypted connection to a machine running FFmpeg, and the upload, the converted result and the job record are deleted together when the retention window runs out — six hours by default. Two behaviours are worth expecting. Every output is written with an infinite loop count, so an animation that was set to play once comes back repeating. And nothing checks that the input moves at all, so a still PNG is accepted without complaint and returned as a single-frame animation.

How to use it

  1. Add the animation. A PNG or APNG, a GIF, or a WebP, up to 200 MB each. Add several and each is converted as its own job, run one after another with the same settings. The file name is only a hint: the upload is identified by its magic bytes, and an APNG passes that check as the PNG it is at byte level.
  2. Pick one of the three formats. Animated GIF for the widest software support, APNG for full colour with a real alpha channel, animated WebP for the smallest of the three at a comparable quality.
  3. Set the quality if you picked WebP. 40 to 100, higher keeping more detail and more bytes. Tick Lossless for flat graphics, screen recordings and anything carrying text, where lossy artefacts appear around edges long before they show in photographic frames.
  4. Check the size that came back. The result panel puts the size before and after side by side, and adds a saved percentage whenever the new file is the smaller one. It is the quickest way to see whether the format change actually bought anything — and a conversion that gains weight simply shows no saved figure at all.

Processing & privacy

Secure server processing. This operation requires temporary server processing.

Common use cases

Putting a transparent animation on a coloured background

GIF allows one fully transparent colour and no partial transparency, so anti-aliased edges show a hard fringe. The same frames as APNG or animated WebP keep their alpha channel and sit cleanly on any background.

Cutting the weight of something that has to stay animated

Animated WebP normally encodes far below the same frames in GIF, and current browsers all play it. When the destination will take a video instead, GIF to MP4 goes smaller again.

Sending an animation somewhere that only knows GIF

Older wikis, forums and ticketing systems predate WebP and never learned APNG. Converting down to GIF costs colour and detail, but the animation plays instead of sitting there as a still frame.

Opening an animated WebP in software that refuses it

Some design applications and CMS uploaders reject WebP outright. Converting to APNG keeps full colour and transparency in a container built on PNG, which almost everything can at least open.

Questions

Does the animation leave my machine?
Yes. The encoding runs through FFmpeg on the server, so the animation is sent over an encrypted connection, converted there, and deleted along with its job record when the retention window closes — six hours by default. Tools that need no upload at all, such as GIF Compressor, are marked as running in the browser.
Why did my GIF come back a different size and speed?
Because the GIF path is fixed at 12 frames per second and 480 pixels wide, and there is no control here to change either figure. A faster source has frames dropped and a narrower one is scaled up. GIF Resizer sets the dimensions of a finished GIF, and GIF Compressor lets you choose the scale and how many frames to keep.
Does the quality slider affect GIF output?
No. It reaches the WebP encoder only. GIF size is governed by the palette and the frame count rather than a quality dial, and the palette here is generated automatically, so the slider has nothing to act on when GIF is the target.
Will the converted animation still loop?
Yes, and it will loop indefinitely whatever the original specified, because all three outputs are written with an infinite loop count. There is no setting here to make an animation play once and stop on its last frame.
Will transparent areas survive the conversion?
APNG and animated WebP carry the alpha channel through unchanged. GIF cannot: it holds one transparent colour and no partial transparency, so soft edges harden and semi-transparent pixels are forced to one side or the other.
Can I trim, resize or re-time the animation here?
No. This converts between the three formats and does nothing else — no trimming, no reordering, and no dimension control beyond the fixed width the GIF path imposes. GIF Splitter takes an animation apart into individual frames, and GIF Maker builds one from stills.
Will an APNG play everywhere?
In browsers, yes. Elsewhere it depends on the reader: software that does not know the format treats the file as an ordinary PNG and displays the first frame as a still image, because that is precisely what the first frame is. GIF remains the safer choice when you cannot control what opens the file.
What if I feed it a still image?
It is accepted and converted without a warning, since nothing here tests whether the input is animated. You get a one-frame GIF, APNG or WebP back. Convert Image and WebP Converter are the tools meant for still pictures.

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