If you are new to Mac, there are some adaptations you need to make. Including when you want to preview an animated GIF file. On Windows and Linux, you can simply double-click an animated GIF file to preview it. On Mac, when you double-click an animated GIF file, it will open the file on the Preview app. Instead of previewing the animated GIF, the Preview app will open the frames of it.

There are probably some Preview app alternatives out there to preview an animated GIF on Mac. But instead of installing a new app only to preview an animated GIF, you can use the built-in feature of Mac. While you can’t preview an animated GIF using the Preview app, you can do so using Finder, the default file manager of Mac.

To preview an animated GIF using Finder, first, open Finder and go to the folder where you store the animated GIF you want to preview. Select the animated GIF file and press the space key on the keyboard.

To get the detailed info about the file, you can right-click and select Get Info. This will open the Info panel where you can find information like file size, file dimensions, and so on.

There is another alternative to preview an animated GIF on Mac without installing an extra app: using Safari. Simply right-click the animated GIF you want to preview and select Open With -> Safari.

To download an animated GIF file, you can visit sites like Giphy, Make a GIF, to GIFGIFS.com. If you want to record your Mac screen and convert it into a GIF format, you can use tools like Jumpshare and Droplr.