After disappearing for weeks, Instagram GIFs are back for affected users but with a small boring collection

It seems Instagram users who were previously experiencing issues with GIFs in the app are now reporting that they are making a return. However, it’s not quite the triumphant return everyone might have hoped for.

While the GIF functionality is indeed back, the collection itself seems to have undergone a rather dull transformation. Gone are many of the popular GIFs featuring movie clips, TV show moments, or recognizable pop culture references. Instead, users are reporting a decidedly “boring” selection, heavily dominated by simple drawings, plain text, and generic cartoon-style animations. Think more “Happy Birthday” with a white background and less of your favorite celebrity’s reaction face.

Check out these user-shared screenshots for reference:

This change has left many users confused. For a while, some users couldn’t see GIFs at all in DMs, comments, or Stories, a problem we previously highlighted a few weeks ago. The situation seemed to worsen by June 18, with some even getting “content unavailable” messages when trying to view GIFs in comments. The widespread absence led to a lot of speculation and frustration across the platform.

Now, with the GIFs reappearing, the new limited library is the hot topic. Users are taking to other platforms to share their observations. “Last week my gifs stopped working. Now they’re back but they’ve all been changed to boring gifs and nothing from tv or movies,” one user shared on Reddit. “It’s mostly just cartoons or nothing at all. Is this what everyone else on iPhone has now?”

Another user also posted about the same issue, stating:

White backgrounds giphy only showing? Anybody else experiencing this issue? I tried deleting the app to see if it will help fix it but nothings working and it’s just this account that’s having issue.

It seems the “white background garbage” as one person called it, is a common experience. Some believe this limited selection might be a deliberate design choice rolling out with recent updates. However, that does not appear to be the case. In my testing, I can still see all the GIFs as usual. Even searching for GIFs like from ‘The Office’ brings up the expected results.

Furthermore, there’s no evidence to suggest that Instagram is planning on ditching GIPHY’s vast collection of GIFs due to any legal issues. So it’s most likely that this is indeed still an ongoing issue that will most likely be ironed out sooner rather than later.

As usual, we’ll be keeping an eye out for any further developments and will update the article if there’s something to share. In the meantime, feel free to drop a comment below and let us know if you too are seeing the same boring GIFs.