How animated SVG becomes GIF frames
SVG animations live on a timeline: SMIL elements such as <animate> and CSS @keyframes both describe how properties change over time. The converter pauses that timeline, steps it forward one frame at a time, freezes the current state of every element and rasterises it — producing evenly spaced frames that play back at exactly the frame rate you choose.
Animations driven by JavaScript (for example, GSAP or custom scripts) can’t be captured this way, because scripts are stripped for safety. For those, record them playing in the browser with the GIF Recorder. Lottie animations exported from After Effects have their own converter: Lottie to GIF.
Picking size and frame rate
Because SVG is resolution-independent, the output width is your choice — render icons at 128–256 px, illustrations at 480–800 px. Loading spinners and icon animations look smooth at 20–30 fps; slower illustrative motion is fine at 12–15 fps. GIF transparency is 1-bit, so anti-aliased edges against a transparent background can look jagged on dark pages; choosing a background colour that matches where the GIF will appear gives the cleanest result. To shrink the result further, use the GIF compressor.