# Gifs inside Onebox?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gifs-inside-onebox/1030758
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [June 8, 2026, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gifs-inside-onebox/1030758 "2026-06-08T21:53:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gifs-inside-onebox/1030758/1 "2026-06-08T21:53:20Z")
Is this new? In another thread, someone posted a link to The Daily Beast and I see the Onebox has an animated gif running in it? Is that new? Can it be turned off? I’ve made my peace with Gifs on this site, mostly because we don’t go overboard with them. But if they start showing up in Oneboxes, it’s gonna get real annoying, real fast. There are a few sites that have enough gifs that I often can’t scroll them off the page and end up just not reading whatever was on the page. I can’t read a website when there’s animations or blinking or otherwise things moving around on the page.
I know that’s a ‘me’ problem, but I’d be thrilled if Discourse gave us the option to at least pause them, similar to how you can click on a gif on facebook and it stops. That would go for inline gifs as well as Onebox gifs.
[Here’s](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/risks-of-usps-manipulation-by-the-trump-admin-2026-and-forward/1030708/13) the post in I’m referring to.
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### Author:  [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gifs-inside-onebox/1030758/2 "2026-06-08T22:12:12Z")
That’s been there since the move to Discourse.
Media outlets don’t typically put animated GIFs in the onebox which is probably why you haven’t noticed them before. But the functionality has always been there.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gifs-inside-onebox/1030758/3 "2026-06-08T23:24:48Z")
There are browser extensions to stop those.
For Chrome or Edge I use:
> **[Animation Policy - Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/animation-policy/ncigbofjfbodhkaffojakplpmnleeoee)**
>
> Run animations only once, or disable animation completely.
I leave it set to animate once then freeze. There are certainly other similar extensions for those browsers if for some reason this one doesn’t make you happy.
I can’t speak to Apple Safari, Firefox, etc. but it’s a decent bet there’s a similar extension available for them too.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gifs-inside-onebox/1030758/4 "2026-06-08T23:36:21Z")
> [@TroutMan](#):
>
> Media outlets don’t typically put animated GIFs in the onebox which is probably why you haven’t noticed them before. But the functionality has always been there.
I want to expand on this a little bit. The way the OneBox works is that the server (partially) loads the website and loads some metadata from it. That’s how it gets the title, the little excerpt or description, and the image to display, along with some other things.
So if the website sets that image to an animated GIF, that’s what the OneBox puts in there, and then your browser goes and gets the image. Discourse itself isn’t involved once it gets the data.