Giphy’s new app just made texting your BFF that much more fun

I like to have wild times during my Friday nights. For example, one night, I stayed inside and searched for hours to find the perfect reactionary gifs to send to my sister. My sister is as charmed by gifs as I am, and about a month before this particular incident, I had sent her some funny Winston Bishop gifs on a whim — she had no idea that gifs could be sent by text before, and was amazed (especially since Winston Bishop, her ultimate fave New Girl character, is extremely gif-worthy.) Since the gifs sometimes don’t seem to animate as they’re sending, (and copying and pasting directly from the site is weirdly difficult) there’s always the question of whether or not “it worked,” thus taking part of the fun out of the gif in the first place. It’s like the equivalent of explaining the punchline of a joke.

Giphy aimed to solve this problem with the release of Giphy Keys, a free iOS app that just launched this month. If you like gifs as much as we do, you’ve probably installed it immediately after reading that sentence. There are plenty of gif-related apps available, but Giphy Keys is quirky, fun, and pretty easy to use.

All you need to do, is go to your App Store and download the program, “GIPHY Keys.”

After downloading, make sure to enable the program in your keyboards menu, and from there, you’re ready to go. Just like emojis, you’ll see the keyboard when you go to send a text.

Giphy Keys lumps gifs into categories, like “Animals,” “Cartoons,” and “Celebrities,” as well as “Hello,” “WTF,” and “SMH,” but also has a search function if you want to narrow down the selection a bit. For example, if you’re a fan of Dance Moms, you can have a conversation solely in Abby Lee Miller gifs.

But the coolest features are hidden under the 8-ball icon. “Echo” allows you to make a gif of any phrase, “Weather” makes a gif that includes the temperature outside, and “8Ball” predicts your fortune in gif form. While it literally takes two seconds to check the weather, making a gif of the weather is just a little more fun.

Since Giphy is constantly being updated with fresh gifs, the selection will never get stale. For example, the amount of gifs available of cats wearing sunglasses was almost alarming. And, good to know — while Giphy Keys is currently available just for iOS, friends with Android phones can easily see the gif in all of its glory. (But don’t worry, Android users — Giphy Keys should be available for you soon.)

In short, Giphy Keys is ideal for all of your gif needs, and with the bonus 8Ball features, is a fun way to waste some time. Thanks to Giphy, your texts with your best friend will become much more animated, and way more fun.