Facebook just announced that it purchased Giphy and all across the Internet, users quickly committed to ditching the service. If you’re concerned about the service being owned by Facebook, follow along for the best Giphy alternatives for iPhone and how to delete the iMessage Giphy app.
Over the last decade, Giphy had risen to the top as one of the most popular GIF platforms. With today’s news about Facebook buying the company, it immediately raised privacy and security concerns and many will likely look for a new source of GIFs.
Apple includes its own GIF search app in iMessage for iPhone and iPad and notably, thanks to some digging from my colleague Filipe Espósito, he found it’s powered by Bing. Technically, Bing can still source GIFs through Giphy via Apple’s native iMessage search, but it’s not directly powered by Giphy.
Bloomberg‘s Sarah Frier notes that Facebook has confirmed it will know through which apps Giphy GIFs are being used but won’t get user-identifiable data. Apple could decide to filter out Giphy results in the future and some point, or it’s possible it’s already using an approach like Signal who uses a privacy-protecting proxy.
In any case, good Giphy alternatives for a diverse selection of GIFs inclue Tenor, GIFWrapped, as well as Reddit. And below we’ll also look at how to delete the Giphy iMessage app from iPhone and iPad.
Best Giphy alternatives for iPhone
Apple’s iMessage GIF app
If you haven’t used it before, Apple includes a built-in GIF search app in iMessage. Look for the red icon with a magnifying glass called “#images.” It is powered by Microsoft’s Bing, though it can include Giphy GIFs. It’s hard to tell which GIFs are coming from Giphy so if you want totally stop using Giphy, one of the other choices below will be your best bet.
If you don’t see it in your iMessage app drawer:
- Swipe to the far right of your iMessage apps
- Tap the “More” three-dot icon
- Tap “Edit” in the top right corner
- Swipe down to find #images and tap the green + icon
- Now tap done
Here’s how it looks:
Tenor
Tenor might not have the same mindshare as Giphy at the moment, but it claims to be the No. 1 global GIF app with the largest community. Tenor can be accessed from any device through its website and through the iOS (GIF keyboard) and iMessage apps (Android, too).
You may prefer to opt for Tenor if you want to totally step away from Giphy. But for what it’s worth, Tenor is owned by Google.
GIFWrapped
If you’re looking to steer away from any apps/services owned by large tech companies, GIFWrapped is a solid solution to create and manage your own GIF library.
It uses iCloud or Dropbox to store and save GIFs across multiple devices and includes an iMessage app. GIFWrapped is a free download from the App Store with an in-app purchase option to remove ads for a flat $2.
H/T Rosemary Orchard
This is a little different approach/experience than Tenor or Apple’s GIF search app, but there are tons of great GIFs to be found on Reddit.
On the GIFs subreddit, you can sort by hot, new, and top.
Google or DuckDuck Go search
Don’t forget you can also just do a good old fashioned web search with Google or DuckDuck Go (good privacy-focused options) for “______ GIF.” Use the “Image” result filter to refine your search.
In our testing, Google seems to produce more GIFs from Giphy than DuckDuck Go if you’re looking to steer away from Giphy. With web searches, it’s easy to quickly check the source.
How to delete Giphy iMessage app on iPhone and iPad
- Open iMessage
- In the iMessage app drawer swipe to the far right
- Tap the three-dot “More” icon
- Swipe down and find the Giphy iMessage app
- Swipe from right to left and tap Delete
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