Recently someone sent me an animated picture on Signal, and I thought to reply in kind. To my surprise, when I downloaded the file, it turned out to be an MP4 video. 
When I tried to send an MP4 video, it did not loop. APNG with AVIF displayed as still pictures, while JPEG XL didn’t get displayed at all. So in the end, I had to settle for the (not very) good old GIF, which was a waste of space.
Apparently Signal has some ‘GIF’ service integration, which actually serves videos that Signal displays as silent and looping, but that doesn’t seem to be a thing on its desktop client. I wonder if it’s possible to achieve a similar effect sending one’s own video file? 
#lang_en #free_software #GIF #MP4 #questions #Signal #SignalApp #technology