Am I the only one? If I’m identifying and one of the observations is moving it puts me on edge and I have to quickly go to the next page. If people want to add GIFs I would prefer them to be the 2nd photo, not the one that shows up in Identify. But perhaps I am the odd one out? And another thing - …

[image] stockslager: In many cases, the gif would never be seen because the primary image can’t effectively capture the observation (which means the second image would never be navigated to). A certain portion of users do in fact put GIFs as the second/third/last image precisely because they …

You’ve replied to spiphany 3 times, did you know you could send them a personal message instead? I got this message when I started to reply. I’m gonna take it as a hint and just agree to disagree. :)

The dumbest feature on my iPhone is the Live setting for photos. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw some of my photos “jump” when I opened them. Thankfully you can disable this feature on any individual photo when you’ve accidentally taken a pic in Live mode, but I’m not sure why it exists i…

Yes… it’s nice they allow it to be disabled in phones and browsers so that we don’t need to project our sensibilities onto each other.

I would prefer not to see GIFs. Liable to scroll past ASAP. Next ?

So many ways to disable it if that’s what they want to do.

@stockslager you’ve shared your perspective, I don’t think it’s helpful here to continue to repeat it.

Sorry, @stockslager but as someone who has created, faved and identified animated GIF images on iNat, I’m going to say that the edge-case arguments that you’re making in favor of why you need to use a GIF as the first image in an observation are far outweighed by the clearly articulated reasons why …

These points, although very thoughtful, do not adequately express my thoughts. I’ve been asked to stop presenting my thoughts on the topic, so I will.

I would agree that the discussion here didn’t seem like it was achieving much. But I was hoping that you might agree that sometime small personal conveniences are worth forgoing for the benefit of the broader community. It’s probably best to park the discussion as you indicate!

GIF Observations Drive me Crazy

General

Vireya June 28, 2026, 12:49am 64

Thank you for the suggestion. I’ve written a request so will be interested to see what happens.

Here’s the feature request:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/allow-users-to-choose-whether-gifs-or-videos-in-future-should-run-automatically/80877

Topic		Replies	Views
Allow users to choose whether gifs (or videos in future) should run automatically Feature Requests web	17	375	June 30, 2026
How to convert a video so it can be posted on iNat? General	19	2179	February 26, 2024
Upload videos Feature Requests web , android-app , under-review , mobile-app	42	8611	June 4, 2026
Observations without media should not allow IDs by other users Feature Requests	24	809	December 13, 2024
Observers Mocking Identifiers? General	52	4068	September 6, 2023

GIF Observations Drive me Crazy

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