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How can I prevent animated GIFs from playing?

  • 3 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 21 views
  • Last reply by GeneW

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A simple issue, but I have not found a solution. In FIrefox on Windows 10, I would like animated GIF images to NOT be animated, they should just appear as a static image. I've already set two Config options to False:

media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground media.autoplay.enabled

which does block videos from running. But advertisers have figured that out! So now I'm seeing lots of animated GIF images, instead of videos. Less annoying, yes, but I'd prefer no movement at all. No, I don't want to block all ads, that's a separate issue. Thank you

A simple issue, but I have not found a solution. In FIrefox on Windows 10, I would like animated GIF images to NOT be animated, they should just appear as a static image. I've already set two Config options to False: media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground media.autoplay.enabled which does block videos from running. But advertisers have figured that out! So now I'm seeing lots of animated GIF images, instead of videos. Less annoying, yes, but I'd prefer no movement at all. No, I don't want to block all ads, that's a separate issue. Thank you

All Replies (3)

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Hi

You might want to try using an add-on to block gif files. You can find a selections of add-ons that may help here.

I hope this helps, but if not, please come back here and we can look into a different solution for you.

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Note that there are also images that not normal GIF images, but are actually MP4 (.gifv) files that are played via the HTML5 media player.

Note that for real animated GIF images you can use the image.animation_mode pref (none, once, normal).

See also SuperStop (Shift+Esc):

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Thank you both for your suggestions. I tend to not look for solutions with add-ons at first, hoping instead to find a method within Firefox. So I found the "image.animation_mode" in the config settings, and found it was set to "normal". So I changed it to "once" and will see if I notice the difference.

Then I went into my notes file for various computer issues, went to the Firefox section, and found that I'd already changed this very same option two years ago! Perhaps it was reset during a Firefox upgrade, I don't know. I'll see how it works when set to once. Thanks to you both.