GIF Search CLI (gifgrep)

gifgrep — Grep the GIF

Search GIF providers (Tenor, Giphy) with scriptable CLI output or interactive TUI with inline previews.

• Repo: https://github.com/steipete/gifgrep
• Website: https://gifgrep.com
• Author: @steipete

Installation

brew install steipete/tap/gifgrep

Or via Go:

go install github.com/steipete/gifgrep/cmd/gifgrep@latest

Key Commands

Search GIFs

gifgrep cats --max 5
gifgrep cats --format url | head -n 5
gifgrep cats --json | jq '.[0].url'
gifgrep "office handshake" --source giphy --max 3 --json

Download

gifgrep cats --download --max 1 --format url
gifgrep cats --download --reveal    # download and reveal in Finder

Extract Stills & Sheets

gifgrep still ./clip.gif --at 1.5s -o still.png
gifgrep sheet ./clip.gif --frames 9 --cols 3 -o sheet.png

Interactive TUI

gifgrep tui "office handshake"

Providers

Select via --source:

• auto (default): prefers Giphy when GIPHY_API_KEY is set, else Tenor
• tenor: uses public demo key if TENOR_API_KEY is unset
• giphy: requires GIPHY_API_KEY

Output Modes

• Default: human-readable (TTY-aware)
• --json: array of objects with id, title, url, preview_url, tags, width, height
• --format url: one URL per line (pipeable)
• --thumbs: inline still-frame thumbnails (Kitty/iTerm2 terminals)

Environment Variables

• TENOR_API_KEY (optional)
• GIPHY_API_KEY (required for --source giphy)