gifgrep

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Search GIF providers with CLI/TUI, download results, and extract stills/sheets.

⭐3.1kstars🔀474forks📁View on GitHub🕐Updated Jan 11, 2026
[Visual Content Workflows]

When & Why to Use This Skill

gifgrep is a high-performance CLI and TUI utility designed to streamline the process of searching, previewing, and downloading GIFs from major providers like Giphy and Tenor. It goes beyond simple search by allowing users to extract specific still frames or generate comprehensive frame sheets (grids), making it an essential tool for developers and creators who need to manage animated assets efficiently from the terminal.

Use Cases

  • 1. Documentation and Pull Requests: Generate frame sheets (PNG grids) from GIFs to provide a static, easy-to-review overview of animations within technical documentation or GitHub PRs.
  • 2. Rapid Content Discovery: Use the Terminal User Interface (TUI) to quickly browse and preview GIFs from Giphy and Tenor without leaving the command line, speeding up social media and communication workflows.
  • 3. Design Asset Extraction: Extract high-quality still frames at specific timestamps from animated GIFs for use in UI/UX mockups, blog posts, or static presentations.
  • 4. Automated Media Pipelines: Integrate gifgrep into automated scripts using its JSON output and CLI flags to programmatically find, download, and process visual content based on specific search queries.
namegifgrep
descriptionSearch GIF providers with CLI/TUI, download results, and extract stills/sheets.
homepagehttps://gifgrep.com
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gifgrep

Use gifgrep to search GIF providers (Tenor/Giphy), browse in a TUI, download results, and extract stills or sheets.

GIF-Grab (gifgrep workflow)

  • Search → preview → download → extract (still/sheet) for fast review and sharing.

Quick start

  • gifgrep cats --max 5
  • gifgrep cats --format url | head -n 5
  • gifgrep search --json cats | jq '.[0].url'
  • gifgrep tui "office handshake"
  • gifgrep cats --download --max 1 --format url

TUI + previews

  • TUI: gifgrep tui "query"
  • CLI still previews: --thumbs (Kitty/Ghostty only; still frame)

Download + reveal

  • --download saves to ~/Downloads
  • --reveal shows the last download in Finder

Stills + sheets

  • gifgrep still ./clip.gif --at 1.5s -o still.png
  • gifgrep sheet ./clip.gif --frames 9 --cols 3 -o sheet.png
  • Sheets = single PNG grid of sampled frames (great for quick review, docs, PRs, chat).
  • Tune: --frames (count), --cols (grid width), --padding (spacing).

Providers

  • --source auto|tenor|giphy
  • GIPHY_API_KEY required for --source giphy
  • TENOR_API_KEY optional (Tenor demo key used if unset)

Output

  • --json prints an array of results (id, title, url, preview_url, tags, width, height)
  • --format for pipe-friendly fields (e.g., url)

Environment tweaks

  • GIFGREP_SOFTWARE_ANIM=1 to force software animation
  • GIFGREP_CELL_ASPECT=0.5 to tweak preview geometry