Get animated .gif (video) from tweet

[MaciejKozik]

Hey there.

I’ve been struggling to find out whether a given tweet contains an animated .gif (which is, to my knowledge, converted to an .mp4), and if it does, grab the link to it. I saw similar threads here, but they date to atleast a month back, and an answer was not given there, so I suppose it’s OK to ask again.

Any ideas why there’s no information about animated gifs in entities? Is there a way to get it?

Cheers.

[andypiper]

Hi, thanks for the question. We’ve been working to enable this (animated GIFs in extended entities) for a while but we’re not quite ready to provide it in the API yet - it is coming very soon! Hold tight, and we’ll certainly announce here when the animated GIF entities are ready for general consumption. Thanks for your patience, and we apologise for the delay in bringing this to you all.

[MaciejKozik]

Thanks for the response, I’ll be waiting then!

[richardhyland]

I noticed there is a post in the Streaming API forum for 2nd Feb support for Animated GIFs, will this be in the REST API at the same time?

[andypiper]

That’s the plan - we will sort out a proper announcement as such!

[Mokh_Akh]

hello,

i am not developer but i try to find anyway to download gif images from twitter as gif image not MP4
or at least if there any app convert mp4 to gif

[andypiper]

We transcode the original animated GIF to MP4 so you’d need to seek an alternative tool to do the reverse, this is not something that we provide.

[alper]

So there’s no way to get the GIF back from Twitter? Twitter is the end point for any interesting GIF being shared?

[andypiper]

As I mentioned, the original GIF is transcoded on upload to MP4 - you can get the MP4 media object back in an API response, but not the GIF file.

[alper]

That’s a shame because it effectively makes twitter into a graveyard for GIF sharing.

[dorian_elf]

There is actually an android app that allows you to download animated gifs from tweeter: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.trecet.nowhere.tweet2gif

[danieltrolezi]

Any updates?

[Tweet2Gif]

tweet2gif.com solves this.
Have fun!

[metadatum]

@andypiper does Twitter still allow extracting the mp4s from the API so they can be transcoded back into GIFs?

[andypiper]

There has never been any restriction on this.

[metadatum]

@andypiper thank you, that’s what I understood as well. How does one obtain a letter from Twitter confirming such? I know some devs trying to pass the Apple App review process. Thanks in advance

[andypiper]

There’s no method for obtaining a letter on this topic. I’m confused as to why Apple would have any restriction against this, but clearly that’s their own choice. There’s nothing in Twitter’s Developer Agreement and Policy to prevent you from accessing the mp4 data in a Tweet. That’s the place to look for our rules on these things.

[metadatum]

Thanks for the help Andy; appreciate your support.