GIFs not working in Teams: 6 ways to fix it

Applies to: the new Microsoft Teams app on Windows 11, Windows 10 and Mac, and Teams on the web, for work, school and personal accounts.

First, which GIF problem do you have?

“GIFs not working in Teams” covers a few different problems with different fixes:

What you see	Most likely cause	Go to
GIFs appear but don’t animate, or only the preview is frozen	Animations turned off in Windows, macOS or Teams	Fix 1 and 2
The GIF option is missing from the Emoji, GIFs and Stickers menu	Optional connected experiences off, or Giphy turned off by policy	Fix 3 and 5
GIF search shows a spinner or blank results	Cache problem, blocked network or a service issue	Fix 4 and 6
Old GIFs show as links instead of images	Usually a service-side or policy change affecting the whole organisation	Fix 5 and 6

If everyone in your organisation lost GIFs at the same time, skip straight to Fix 5 and 6: it’s a policy or service change, not your PC.

Fix 1: Turn on animation effects (GIFs don’t move)

This is the most common cause of frozen GIFs in the desktop app and in the browser. Teams follows the operating system’s request to reduce motion, so if Windows animations are off, GIFs stay still. Many users only find out after an update or a performance tweak turned the setting off.

• Windows 11: open Settings > Accessibility > Visual effects and turn Animation effects on.
• Windows 10: open Settings > Ease of Access > Display and turn on Show animations in Windows.
• Mac: open System Settings > Accessibility > Display, turn Reduce motion off and, if you see it, turn Auto-play animated images on.

Quit Teams completely (right-click its taskbar icon and choose Quit) and open it again. If you’d turned animations off to make Windows feel faster, note that this one switch controls both, so you’ll get the window animations back too.

Fix 2: Check Teams’ own animation setting

Teams has its own switch as well. Select Settings and more (…) next to your profile picture, choose Settings > Appearance and accessibility, and make sure Turn off animations is off. When it’s on, GIFs and other animations in Teams don’t play.

Fix 3: Turn on optional connected experiences

GIFs in Teams come from Giphy, an online service that Microsoft treats as an optional connected experience. If that’s off for your account, the GIF option disappears or stops loading even when everything else in Teams works.

• In Teams, open Settings and more (…) > Settings > Privacy and look for the optional connected experiences option. The exact wording and location vary between Teams versions and account types.
• Because the setting is shared across Microsoft 365, you can also change it from Word, Excel or Outlook: File > Account > Account Privacy > Manage Settings, then turn on Turn on optional connected experiences.
• Restart Teams after changing it.

If the option is greyed out, your organisation controls it through a policy, and only an admin can change it (see Fix 5).

Fix 4: Restart Teams and clear its cache

A damaged local cache can stop GIF search and previews loading. Clearing it doesn’t delete your chats or files, which are stored online, but you’ll need to sign in again.

1. Right-click the Teams icon in the taskbar’s notification area and choose Quit. Check Task Manager to make sure no ms-teams.exe process is still running.
2. Press Win + R, paste the path below and press Enter.
3. Delete everything in the folder that opens, then start Teams again.

%localappdata%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams

Alternatively, go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps, find Microsoft Teams, select the three dots > Advanced options and choose Repair (keeps your sign-in) or Reset (clears the app’s data). Some users report that clearing the cache only helps for a while, in which case Fix 1 or 3 is the real cause. If you also need to sort out which account Teams is signed in with, see how to remove an account from Teams.

Fix 5: For admins: enable Giphy in the messaging policy

On work and school accounts, two separate admin settings have to allow GIFs:

• Teams messaging policy: in the Teams admin center, go to Messaging policies (under Messaging in recent versions), edit the global policy or the custom policy assigned to the affected users, and turn on Use Giphy in conversations. Giphy content rating (No restriction, Moderate or Strict) controls how strictly results are filtered. Save, and allow time for the change to reach users.
• Microsoft 365 privacy policy: Microsoft’s documentation says optional connected experiences must also be enabled for Giphy to work. In the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center (config.office.com), open Customization > Policy Management, edit or create a policy and set Allow the use of additional optional connected experiences in Office to Enabled. Users may need to restart Teams once it applies.

Team owners may also be able to limit GIFs in a particular team, usually under Manage team > Settings > Fun stuff, so check that if GIFs work in chats but not in one team’s channels.

Fix 6: Check for an outage or a blocked network

GIF features have broken organisation-wide several times after Teams service updates, with Microsoft tracking them as service incidents. Admins can check Microsoft 365 admin center > Health > Service health for a current Teams incident; if there is one, waiting for Microsoft’s fix is the only option.

Some company networks, proxies and web filters also block Giphy’s servers. If GIFs work on your phone’s mobile data or at home but not in the office, ask IT whether Giphy is blocked. On a home PC with wider connection problems, start with Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration.

Related guides

• How to remove an account from Microsoft Teams
• Outlook tips and tricks to save time every day
• How to stop OneDrive from syncing (pause, unlink or turn off)
• Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration: how to fix it

Official sources: for more detail, see Microsoft’s own pages:

• Microsoft Support: Send an emoji, GIF, or sticker in Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Learn: Manage messaging policies in Teams (Giphy settings)

Frequently asked questions

Why did GIFs disappear from Teams for everyone at work?

When the whole organisation loses GIFs at once, it’s either an admin policy change (Giphy or optional connected experiences turned off) or a Microsoft service issue. Ask your IT team to check the messaging policy and Service health; there’s nothing to fix on individual PCs.

Why do GIFs play on my phone but not on my PC?

Usually because Windows animation effects are off on the PC (Fix 1). The mobile app doesn’t use that setting, so it keeps playing GIFs.

Can I stop GIFs from auto-playing in Teams?

Yes. Turn on Turn off animations in Teams’ Appearance and accessibility settings. That stops GIFs moving for you without affecting anyone else.

Can I add GIFs that aren’t on Giphy?

Yes. You can attach a GIF file or paste one into a chat like any image, as long as your organisation allows image pasting and file sharing. Only the built-in GIF search depends on Giphy.