Convert APNG to AVIF Online

APNG vs AVIF — Should You Convert Your Animation?

APNG gives you a lossless animation that plays everywhere but ships large files; animated AVIF gives you the smallest modern animated image with full color, alpha, and HDR, at the cost of slower encoding and patchier playback support. If you control the delivery target and it runs Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, AVIF wins on bytes; if you need a still-image fallback that opens on any device, keep the APNG around too. This converter takes an animated APNG and re-encodes it to animated AVIF using the AV1 codec.

Side-by-side Comparison

When to Pick APNG

• You need a lossless animation with no generational quality loss across edits.
• The animation must play on every browser and device, including older iOS and any Safari version.
• You are storing a short, simple UI animation where file size is not the bottleneck.
• You want a format that decoders have handled reliably for over a decade.

When to Pick AVIF

• File size and bandwidth matter — a long or high-resolution animation in APNG can be many megabytes, and AVIF often cuts that dramatically.
• Your audience is on Chrome, Firefox, or Edge (desktop or Android), where animated AVIF plays.
• You want 10/12-bit color or HDR that APNG cannot store.
• You can supply a fallback (a <picture> element or a still image) for Safari and iOS, where animated AVIF playback is not reliable.

How Animated AVIF Compares to WebP and GIF

AVIF is not the only modern animated image format. If you need broader playback than animated AVIF offers, animated WebP is the usual middle ground, and GIF remains the universal-but-dated fallback:

For the smallest files on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, AVIF wins; when iOS or Safari playback matters, animated WebP is the safer target.

How to Convert APNG to AVIF

1. Upload Your APNG File: Drag and drop your animated PNG onto the page or click "Upload" to pick it. Files travel over an encrypted connection and are deleted automatically after a few hours.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Choose from the Quality Preset dropdown — "Very High (Recommended)" preserves the most detail, while lower presets trade visual fidelity for a smaller AVIF. To hit a specific budget, switch to "Specific file size" and enter a target.
3. Set the Resolution (Optional): Leave Resolution Percentage on "Keep original," choose a Preset Resolution, or type an exact Width/Height (aspect ratio is preserved) to shrink the output further.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and download your AVIF. No sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will animated AVIF actually be smaller than my APNG?

Almost always, and often by a wide margin. APNG is lossless PNG applied frame by frame, so a busy or long animation balloons in size. AVIF uses the AV1 codec, which is far more efficient — the format runs roughly 20-25% smaller than WebP for similar quality and dramatically smaller than APNG. In our testing, a 1080p APNG loop several megabytes in size dropped to a small fraction of that as a "Very High" AVIF, with no visible loss on screen.

Will my animation still play after converting to AVIF?

It depends on the browser. Animated AVIF plays in Chrome 85+, Firefox 113+, and Edge 121+ on desktop and Android. Safari and iOS render still AVIF images but do not reliably play animated AVIF yet, so if your audience includes iPhone or Mac Safari users, serve the AVIF with a fallback (a <picture> element pointing at the original APNG, or a static poster image). For maximum reach with smaller-than-APNG files, animated WebP is a safer middle ground that Safari 14+ does play.

Will I lose quality going from lossless APNG to AVIF?

If you keep the default "Very High" preset, the loss is visually negligible on most content. AVIF can also encode losslessly, but lossless AVIF gives up much of its size advantage. For UI graphics with flat colors and hard edges, a high-quality lossy AVIF usually looks identical to the source while saving large amounts of space. For archival masters you want to keep pixel-perfect, hold onto the APNG.

Does AVIF keep the transparency and frame timing from my APNG?

Yes. AVIF supports a full alpha channel, so transparent regions carry over, and frame delays are preserved so the animation plays at the same speed. If a transparent animated AVIF looks wrong in a specific browser, that is a known playback bug in some WebKit builds rather than a problem with the file — test in Chrome or Firefox to confirm the conversion itself is correct.

Why is AVIF encoding slower than other formats?

AVIF is built on AV1, a video codec designed to squeeze maximum compression out of every frame, which is computationally expensive. Encoding a multi-frame animation runs the AV1 encoder across each frame, so a large APNG takes longer to convert than it would to WebP or GIF. The payoff is the smaller output; if you need a fast turnaround and can accept slightly larger files, convert to animated WebP instead.

How do I get the AVIF back to APNG later?

Use the reverse tool. Convert AVIF to APNG re-expands the AV1-encoded animation back into a lossless animated PNG when you need the broad compatibility APNG offers. Note that going AVIF → APNG cannot recover detail a lossy AVIF discarded, so start from your original APNG master whenever possible.

What is the largest APNG I can upload?

There is no fixed per-format cap published for this tool; the practical limit is upload size and time over your connection, since the file is sent to our servers for encoding. Very large or high-resolution APNGs simply take longer to upload and to run through the AV1 encoder. If an upload stalls, reduce the resolution with the Width/Height fields or shorten the animation before converting.

Is my file kept private during conversion?

Yes. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.