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firefox does not save gifs as images

  • 21 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by d.law666

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i used to use chrome until i installed a 14 bit color profile so i installed firefox

i found i could not right click and save a gif like i save a PNG or Jpeg

it only says "copy gif address" and this is NOT what i want

i want to right click and "save as" like chrome does

google is useless on this front and i cant get it to work properly

what is so hard about allowing me to download gifs like i would jpegs and PNGs

i used to use chrome until i installed a 14 bit color profile so i installed firefox i found i could not right click and save a gif like i save a PNG or Jpeg it only says "copy gif address" and this is NOT what i want i want to right click and "save as" like chrome does google is useless on this front and i cant get it to work properly what is so hard about allowing me to download gifs like i would jpegs and PNGs
Attached screenshots

All Replies (20)

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Not all GIF images are real images, some animated GIF images are actually MP4 video files and you can't save such a file in a lot of cases.
You can check this via the right-click context menu in the Inspector.

Can you post a link to a publicly accessible page (i.e. no authentication or signing on required) ?

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gifs are not mp4s they are a special animation image compressed

firefox can save gifs as .gif

but it wont because of arbitrary unknown reasons

i did press f12 and i found where the gif was and i could not open just the gif in a new window or tab like i can with chrome (but i dont need to go through this rigamarol with chrome either)

i hate the fact chrome glitches out when i try to use it all because i am using a >8bit color profile

no option to "open in new tab" with just the gif so i can segregate and save it

its not hard to save it as a .gif yet these arbitrary roadblocks are placed needlessly

in chrome i used to be able to save gifs as .GIF in chrome regardless of webpage and they were real gifs not mp4 videos

this is the same its a gif not an mp4 video and i cannot save it

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The Inspector doesn't show an IMG tag like you would expect for an image, but shows some DIV containers with transition properties, so the real image must be present elsewhere in the DOM or possibly drawn on canvas.

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i have dug through the inspector and i cannot get it to let me find it

i dont care what it is it should not be hard to save it as a GIF

i should not need to learn HTML to save a Gif

i have tried clicking the inspector thing (shown in other screen shot) and there is no way to segrigate the gif in any way so i can download it

i dont care if its downloaded as a MP4 or a GIF or even as an MKV or something i just wanna download it with 2 or 3 clicks like how chrome used to work

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i would post the link but it is NSFW and i dont feel thats proper for the forum

i will try to find an SFW gif because it would be the same issue with it as well

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You do not have any other GIF images that aren't inappropriate that have the same issue ?

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i do have a gif image that is appropriate its a gif from a video game but i cant post the link here because this forum wont let me

its on twitter

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https://twitter.com/i/status/1276193490053951488

this is "The Last Of Us 2" and its a Gif of a sad walk cycle but this gif has the same issue as the other

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well how did you get it segregated like that because i can download it if its like that

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i can save it if i can get it segregated like how you did with that video

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i just want to know how to "open in new tab" but with only the "video gif" i want to download

i dont care at this point what format it is

it can be MP4 ... MKV.. GIF... AVI.... webM... etc

i just want the capacity to right click on it and save it without needing to dig around alot

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When I open the Network tab of the dev tools, then click the GIF to play it, this new request appears:

censored.mp4

So it seems at least in Firefox, Twitter is showing video instead of an animated GIF image. This doesn't mean there isn't a way to find a path to the source GIF, but that might not be as simple as back in the day.

The video "player" is behind the transparent control layer, and Firefox's right-click function does not pierce transparent layers. You could run some code to hide that transparent layer for direct access to the video player, but really it would be more convenient if you had some kind of add-on for this.

Anyway, if you want to try running code in the console, this works for me (after the video starts playing):

var vid1 = document.querySelector('video');
if (vid1) {
  var controls = vid1.parentNode, i = 0;
  while (i < 5){
    if (controls.nextElementSibling != null){
      controls.nextElementSibling.style.display = 'none';
      break;
    }
    var controls = controls.parentNode;
    i++;
  }
}

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

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why cant firefox just pierce the transparent layer so i can right click without the code

i will say the code allowed me to download it but this is a temporary fix to a problem that should not have existed in the first place

thank you for this solution i only feel the problem can be avoided if firefox ignored these transparent overlays because i did find the weird flex group thing that looks like a layer infront of the gif but for what reason i dont know

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Or more simply to pop the video out into a new tab:

var vid1 = document.querySelector('video');
if (vid1) window.open(vid1.src, '_blank');


(Makes the popup blocker unhappy, though.)

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

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that is neat :3 but why cant firefox just ignore the transparent overlay thing so i can do this without the codes

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d.law666 said

why cant firefox just ignore the transparent overlay thing so i can do this without the codes

Firefox's context menu has always worked this way. The question of "why" may be answered somewhere, but with 15 years of history to search, well, do you really want to search for it?

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jscher2000 said

d.law666 said

why cant firefox just ignore the transparent overlay thing so i can do this without the codes

Firefox's context menu has always worked this way. The question of "why" may be answered somewhere, but with 15 years of history to search, well, do you really want to search for it?

i guess what i mean to say is that chrome works with this easily and without the needed codes

what chrome hates however is color profiles with more than 8 bits per color channel

(it has a stroke when i open it)

i downloaded firefox as a chrome replacement and it works well in HDR which is nice

but i had to do a basic setting change to allow me to download images and keep their file types

then i find i cannot download Gifs because of this oddly obtuse design choice when having a right click menu open on the gif is something chrome has gotten right for years

microsoft Edge has the same defect as firefox with gifs and its astounding that this defect has been allowed to persist with no fixes or changes

i am glad for the codes so i can manually force it to behave properly but the default response should be a right click menu so i can do what i want with what i see instead of needing to edit the web page to force it to do what i want

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d.law666 said

jscher2000 said

d.law666 said

why cant firefox just ignore the transparent overlay thing so i can do this without the codes

Firefox's context menu has always worked this way. The question of "why" may be answered somewhere, but with 15 years of history to search, well, do you really want to search for it?

i guess what i mean to say is that chrome works with this easily and without the needed codes

Hmm, not for me, I get the same "Copy Gif Address" as in Firefox. Could it be an extension you installed in Chrome that facilitates the download?

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You can search for video in the Inspector (in this case it is result #11 and it is deeply hidden) or use the Web Console or Network Monitor to copy the URL to the clipboard.

If the GIF isn't running then you merely get the placeholder image.

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