Gifbox

As some of you might be aware, Tenor is shutting down its Developer API. If you have ever sent a GIF in a chat app, there is a good chance it came from Tenor via that API, and that includes Stoat. When we found out the API was going away, we had two options: wait around for someone else to solve it, although none of the options satisfied us at the time, or build the thing ourselves.

As you have already read from the title and description, we built the thing. It is available on gifbox.me and powering Stoat’s GIF picker starting right now.

Under the hood, it is built to be fast, modern, and easy to integrate. It is also not limited to Stoat: Stoat is the first place you can use it, but Gifbox is designed as a standalone service that other apps, websites, bots, and tools can use too, for example if they use our Compatibility API, which is largely compatible with Tenor’s former API.

The most important part of Gifbox, however, is the library, and that’s where we need your help: A GIF search engine is only as good as the stuff people put into it, so we are depending on community members like you to help make Gifbox great. Post the good GIFs, or the weird ones, or the funny ones, or whatever memes you have in your favourites. The more people add, the better it gets for everyone.

We are also launching a developer API, because GIFs should not be locked inside one app. Developers can use Gifbox to add GIF search and sharing to their own products without having to build the whole stack themselves. Documentation is available at gifbox.me/dev/docs, and we will be improving the API as we learn from early usage.