Gmail – Turn off animated gifs in Gmail

firefoxgmail

I don't like to be marketed at. Increasingly, my Gmail emails have increasingly obnoxious gifs playing, marketing at me.

I would like turn off gifs playing, preferably only in Gmail.

If there is a way to turn them off within Gmail's core preferences? If so, that would be great!

If not, is there some AdBlock like rule that can be enabled to block them when using Gmail? I mostly use Firefox, and an extension or AdBlock rule would be great.

Best Answer

To turn off auto-play animations in Firefox:

  • Type about:config in the address bar
  • Click "I accept the risk!" if it comes up
  • Find "image.animation" using the search box (just type "anim")
  • Double-click image.animation_mode
  • In the next box, type either "once" for the animated GIF to play once, or none so they never can

The downside here is you can't ever get the file to play later without reverting the settings.

SuperStop extension

For a more flexible software solution, install the SuperStop extension for Firefox:

SuperStop adds a Shift+Esc shortcut and toolbar button that stops background requests and animations even when the Firefox Stop button is disabled.

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