Guide · Windows 11 · Updated October 2026
A screen recording as a GIF for your docs
A GIF plays everywhere: in a README, a wiki, a ticket, an email. No player, no click. The price is file size and colours. With a few rules, a 15-second GIF stays around one or two megabytes and still looks crisp.
GIF or video?
- GIF when it should loop silently next to text: a click path, a drag-and-drop, a setting being changed. Docs platforms and Markdown show GIFs like images.
- Video (MP4) when it is longer than about 20 seconds, needs sound, or shows photos and gradients. MP4 is much smaller for the same content.
Keeping a GIF small and sharp
Record a region, not the screen
Capture only the window or the part of it you explain. Fewer pixels is the biggest saving, and the content is readable at its natural size.
Limits: plan the region before you start; changing it afterwards means cropping.
Keep it short
5–15 seconds, one action per GIF. Two actions? Two GIFs, each next to its paragraph.
Limits: none – shorter is also easier to follow.
Lower the frame rate
10–15 fps is enough for clicks and typing. Every frame you drop is file size saved.
Limits: fast cursor movements look choppy below 10 fps.
Limit the size
1280 × 720 or smaller. Most docs columns are narrower than that anyway.
Limits: smaller sizes lose small text – zoom to the area instead of shrinking the whole screen.
Mind the palette
A GIF frame has at most 256 colours. Flat UI colours fit easily; gradients, photos and shadows produce banding and dithering noise. Use a plain wallpaper and light or dark mode without transparency effects.
Limits: a generic palette blends similar UI colours. A tool that builds the palette from the actual frames keeps them exact.
Store only what changes
A good encoder writes only the changed rectangle of each frame and extends a frame that doesn’t change. A still screen then costs almost nothing.
Limits: depends on the encoder; not every one does it.
Where Glidewright comes in
A GIF preset with its own palette
Glidewright’s “GIF for docs” preset exports 1280 × 720 at 15 fps with its own palette: frequent colours get an exact entry, so flat UI colours stay true. Each frame stores only the changed rectangle, and identical frames extend the previous one. Zooms and the redrawn cursor are part of the GIF.
Measured on an RTX 3060 Ti: a 15-second project became a 1.6 MB GIF in 7.2 seconds.
15-day free trial, then €79 once. No subscription, all 1.x updates included.