Convert SWF to APNG Online

Convert SWF to APNG Online

SWF is Adobe's old Shockwave Flash format — the animation and vector container that powered web games, banner ads, and cartoons until Flash Player reached end of life on December 31, 2020. APNG (Animated PNG) is a modern, lossless animated image that plays natively in current browsers. Converting SWF to APNG turns the video inside the SWF into a frame-by-frame animation you can actually open today, without a dead plugin. Vector animations, banner ads and games have no video inside and can't be converted.

SWF Format at a Glance

APNG Format at a Glance

How to Convert SWF to APNG

1. Upload Your SWF File: Drag and drop your .swf onto the page or click "Upload" to pick it from your device.
2. Set the Framerate: Open the Framerate dropdown and choose your playback speed — the default is "10 FPS (Recommended)", which keeps the file size sane; raise it toward 20-25 FPS only if the original animation is fast-moving.
3. Set the Image Resolution: Use the Image resolution controls — keep original, a preset such as 768p, a percentage, or a custom Width x Height — to balance sharpness against file size. There is no quality slider on this route because APNG frames are written losslessly, so dimensions and framerate are what govern the output size.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why convert SWF to APNG instead of GIF?

APNG keeps full 24-bit color and 8-bit alpha transparency, so gradients and soft edges from a Flash video stay clean, while GIF is capped at 256 colors and a single hard-edged transparency bit. The trade-off is size: APNG files are usually larger. If you need the smallest possible file and can accept color banding, use SWF to GIF instead.

Will an interactive or game SWF convert correctly?

No. A Flash game is vector shapes and ActionScript with no video inside, so there's nothing to convert — we tell you right after upload. To play it, use Ruffle.

Does APNG keep transparency from my Flash file?

Only if the video inside the SWF carries it, which is rare — most Flash video codecs decode to opaque frames. When the decoded frames do have an alpha channel, APNG keeps it.

Will every browser play the resulting APNG?

95.94% of users are on browsers that animate APNG natively — Chrome 59+, Firefox 3+, Safari 8+, and Edge 79+ (per caniuse). The format degrades safely: any viewer that does not support animation, including Internet Explorer, simply shows the first frame as a normal static PNG.

What framerate should I pick for an old Flash animation?

Most Flash content was authored around 12-24 FPS. The 10 FPS default produces a compact, smooth-enough loop for simple animations; bump it up to roughly match the original if motion looks choppy. Higher framerates add frames and grow the APNG file proportionally.

Is APNG smaller or larger than the original SWF?

Usually larger. APNG stores lossless frames, while the video inside a SWF uses lossy inter-frame compression, so even a short clip can reach several megabytes. Lower the frame rate or resolution to keep it small.

Can I just grab a single still frame instead of the whole animation?

Yes. If you only want one poster image rather than the full loop, use SWF to PNG, which exports a static frame as a lossless image that opens anywhere.

Are my uploaded files kept or shared?

No. Files travel to our servers over an encrypted (TLS) connection, are processed there, and are deleted automatically after a few hours. Nothing is shared, made public, or used for anything beyond your conversion.

Will the resulting APNG loop?

APNG carries a loop count in its animation-control data, where zero means play forever, so a looping Flash animation can be reproduced as a continuous loop rather than a one-shot clip. Any decoder that cannot animate APNG simply ignores the loop and falls back to showing the first frame as a static image.