Gif. Jif. Regardless of your pronunciation preference, it’s easy to make that word using a variety of apps and services. Since working at Lifehacker, I’ve found that sometimes it’s easier to show, not tell, with a little animated image that demonstrates an important feature or setting. That’s why I’ve been making a lot of GIFs, and this is the app I use for that on Windows.

I don’t remember where I first found ScreenToGif, but I love this app. When you first open it, you’re presented with a simple menu that shows you the four main features of the app: recording your screen and turning it into a GIF, turning the funny faces you make into your webcam into a GIF, starting a digital whiteboard and turning your scribbles into a GIF, and a general editor that you can use to take existing files (like MP4 videos) and turn them into GIFs.

For the screen recording portion, click the big red Recorder icon and a nice little window overlay will appear: a sort of picture frame that you can adjust around the area you want to capture. Set your desired frames per second and press F7 to start your recording and F8 to stop.

Once you stop recording, ScreenToGif will launch its editor and automatically load what you just captured. The GIF editor is a kind of simplified video editor, since a GIF and a video both create the appearance of movement in similar (but identical) ways.