I have to admit, I have used GIFs in many of my emails in the past and continue to do so when suitable. I love the animations and it’s fun. You can find a huge selection of GIFs made by others on GIPHY. There’s this cool article titled “A Guide to Animated GIFs in Email” by Jason Rodriguez explaining the history, different uses, how to make GIFs and what email clients support them – a recommended read for those curious.
Now, how do I attach GIFs in Apple Mail? I use to do it easily using a cool plugin called Mailbutler. There was a previous version of Mailbutler that allowed users to search GIPHY and insert GIFs while composing an email. What I liked most about Mailbutler’s ability to do this was the fact that I could actually see “playback” on the GIFs I inserted. Sadly, the GIPHY integration is no longer available on the latest version of Mailbutler, maybe they’ll bring it back one day? You can always do it manually by downloading the GIFs and then attaching them into your emails, but my experience is, you won’t see the animation of the GIF, instead, you get a preview of your GIF which looks no different than an attached jpeg. Be rest assured though, that your recipient will see the animation if their email client supports it. You may also notice playback when you check your sent message under your sent items. I don’t necessarily see this as an issue but I do like seeing how the animation looks in context before I hit the send button.
If you absolutely must have playback of your attached GIFs in Apple Mail as you compose a message, I was able to achieve this using the Firefox browser. From Firefox, go to GIPHY, search for whatever you like and then simply drag-drop that GIF into your Apple Mail “New Message” modal window. Why you get this result from Firefox and not Safari is beyond me. But it works at the moment.
Happy emailing with GIFs!
6/20/19 update: Mailbutler’s GIPHY extension for Apple Mail is back!