Disable animated .gifs in Safari 4 --Solved

[i.shaun]

I'm running Tiger, so using any new features in Safari 5 for Leopard is out of the question. The reason I wish to do this is because people still use gifs in forums, and some are very obnoxious with large signature gifs that cause safari to beachball.


I've checked around, and there are other threads but they didn't seem to have a conclusion. I tried something called "SafariPlus", but it caused the program to crash before it could open.

I've messed around with PithHelmet, but it's options to disable animations appear to be only for show, unless it refers to flash animations only. It can block them, but usually ends up blocking everything.


I've looked in the Safari preferences .plist file and couldn't see anything. I've unlocked the Develop and Debug menu, but the only option I see is "Disable Images" in the 'Develop' menu. That functionality seems useful, but there's no way I see to edit what images are blocked, it just blocks them all.

I tried copying the line in the .plist file that dealt with disabling images, but changed it to animations. Didn't work lol

Does anyone know any way this could be accomplished in Safari 4.1?

[GGJstudios]

I just use SafariBlock or Safari AdBlock to block annoying images, especially gifs. Right-click, SafariBlock Image..... done!

[MacKeeperFanMod]

Try using the Saft plugin for Safari.

Blocking animation is activated via the menu Safari -> Block Images and Plugins -> Only Animation.

Blocking downloads gif image can be activated via the menu Safari -> Block Ad / Banners adding a filter value *. gif * (with asterisks).

Good luck!

[i.shaun]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

I just use SafariBlock or Safari AdBlock to block annoying images, especially gifs. Right-click, SafariBlock Image..... done!

SafariBlock did the trick, Thanks!

I was surprised how easy that was, how did I miss that in searches? Weird how it wasn't in other threads either. I'll keep this bookmarked because it may come up again (unless Safari 5 handles gifs better).


I made a manual rule that simply said ".gif", unfortunately it blocked ALL .gifs, which includes some backdrops and buttons, such as the post buttons on macrumors. I went back and changed the rule to simply block the URL to the specific gif I wanted blocked, and when I tried to re-load, it vanished.

Now I can block those obnoxious long animations people put in avatars and signatures. There should be a rule that avatars and signatures don't have more than 3 frames. No need to put a scene from a movie or game with 200 frames in there.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by i.shaun

SafariBlock did the trick, Thanks!

I was surprised how easy that was, how did I miss that in searches? Weird how it wasn't in other threads either. I'll keep this bookmarked because it may come up again (unless Safari 5 handles gifs better).

SafariBlock works great in Safari 5, too. There's no difference in how Safari 4 and 5 handle gifs.