The best way to save, share GIFs on iOS
Sometimes the correct response to someone on iMessage is a GIF. But storing the animated images is a hassle. Not anymore!
One of my personal favorite features of iMessage is that it supports GIFs, the animated images that often lend themselves to pranks, or entertaining responses.
But the problem with iOS and GIFs is the way you have to save them to your device. iOS is capable of saving the animated images, only iOS isn't capable of displaying them in the Camera Roll as animated images. Instead you'll only find a single frame of the GIF displayed as the entire image. Quickly figuring out which images are GIFs and which aren't can be frustrating (especially if you have a lot of memes stored on your device).
Instead of trying to decipher images in the iOS Camera Roll, download the free Dropbox-based app Boxie. Boxie provides a far better user-interface for Dropbox users to organize and view files within a Dropbox account.
One thing Boxie does which iOS or even the official Dropbox app doesn't do, is display GIFs in their true form -- animated. This was brought to my attention by a reader, @KaneHamilton.
By storing your GIFs in a Dropbox folder, and accessing said folder with Boxie, you're able to quickly view and find the proper GIF for the situation, and then share it directly to iMessage from within the app. You'll need to fully open a GIF in Boxie to view it in animated form; at this time the image thumbnails aren't animated.
In addition to having a better way to manage your GIFs on iOS, you're also gaining a far better experience using a Dropbox account on iOS.
Do you have a better method for storing GIFs on iOS? I'd love to hear it. Sound off in the comments below!