[2023] What is Animated PFP on Discord and How to Get one?

March 4, 2023

Having a moving or animated profile picture always seek attention and keep your audience engage. It will surely make your profile stand out. If you own a Discord server and want to know about how to get an animated pfp Discord, you are at the right place.

This blog article will through light and make you learn how to get an animated profile picture (pfp) on Discord. So let’s dive straight to the topic and explore more about it.

Table of Contents

About Animated PFP Discord:

Discord is one of the most popular VoIP, instant messaging and digital distribution platforms. It is bundled with a hell lot of features to communicate and share media files. One of its distinct features is that it let you to choose and set a GIF as your avatar/pfp/profile picture.

Once you change the Discord profile picture by setting a GIF to it, visitors viewing your profile will get to see it as animated. But they have to expand it a bit.

Here’s an easy guide on setting an animated pfp discord. Just keep on reading to understand the step-by-step process to change your pfp on Discord and have an animated one.

How to get an animated PFP on Discord?

In order to get an animated profile picture on Discord, you must have Nitro. Once you get it, the only thing you are required to do is to find a GIF file from tenor or other similar sources, save it on your device and finally change your profile picture to the GIF thereby making it animated.

After you have set an animated profile picture, you can check and verify it by navigating to a small Discord server. All you need here is to find your profile on the member list of the server, click it to expand and you are done. This way you can see if your profile picture is animated or not.

Now let’s get into the detailed steps to understand the process more precisely.

Steps to get an animated profile picture on Discord:

Step#1. Navigate to “Discord Nitro” and get it

As mentioned above, Nitro is an essential requirement to have an animated pfp Discord. If you don’t have Nitro, then the GIF will not move. So, first and foremost, you need to have Nitro to get an animated profile picture on Discord. Nitro Discord also let you to make a custom or animated emoji, upload a profile banner, and much more.

A couple of Nitro versions (Nitro and Nitro Classic) are available for you with Nitro costing $9.99 per month and the cheaper version Nitro Classic costs at $4.99 a month. You can view a complete list of Nitro features by visiting https://discord.com/nitro.

Following are the tasks to be performed to have the desktop version of Discord Nitro. You can skip this step if you already have Discord Nitro.

To start with, open the desktop version of Discord and log in to your account using valid credentials.
Now head to your user settings by clicking on the gear icon located next to your profile picture.
On user settings screen, you will get to see multiple options on left side bar including “My Account”, “User Profile”, “Privacy & Safety”, and others.
Find “Discord Nitro” option under the “Billing Settings” header, click on “Discord Nitro” to navigate to the Discord Nitro page and then click on “Subscribe” button (if you don’t have Discord Nitro.)
Once you have clicked on “Subscribe”, next task is to select a plan from the yearly plan and the monthly plan.
After selection, again click “Select” to confirm it.
Now enter your address and add a payment method(You can either use your debit or credit card details or else PayPal to subscribe to Nitro), click on the checkbox to agree to the Discord Terms of Service and you are done.

The “Nitro Activated” pop-up will now appear on your screen which indicates that you have successfully subscribed to Nitro!

Step#2. Find a GIF and save it

Once you have subscribed to Nitro, you can now go ahead with the next step to set an animated pfp (profile picture) on Discord – that is to download a GIF.

You are provided with a number of GIF search engines (including “Tenor”, “Giphy”, “Gfycat”, and others) to get the job done. We recommend you to use Tenor reason being that it is the default GIF search engine on Discord. Following are the tasks you must undertake to download a GIF.

First of all, navigate to Tenor by clicking here: https://tenor.com/.
After you have landed on Tenor, head to the search bar located at the top of the page. Here type in to look for a GIF which you want to use as your Discord profile picture.
Once you found a desired GIF, make a right-click on it and then click on “Save image as…”

That’s it. The GIF will now get downloaded on your computer and you can head to next step to set that GIF as Discord pfp.

Step#3. Change your Discord pfp/avatar

Having saved the GIF on your computer, you need to set it as your Discord profile picture or avatar by following the below mentioned instructions.

Head to your user settings on Discord by clicking gear icon.
From the options on the left sidebar including “My Account”, “User Profile”, “Privacy & Safety”, and more, click on “User Profile” to get an option for editing your Discord profile.
Now, click on “Change Avatar” to change your profile picture. Once you clicked it, the File Explorer will open.
Here on the File Explorer, you need to find the saved GIF and select it. (In case you forgot the location where you have saved the GIF, just click on “Downloads” and go to downloads folder. Here you will get to see your most recent downloads including GIFs.)
After you have located the GIF, click on “Open” to select it.

Step#4. Edit or Resize the GIF

The next step is to Edit or Resize the selected GIF that you want to use as your Discord pfp. In case, the said GIF is too small to fit in as your profile picture, you can enlarge it by moving the scale to the right on the editing page.

After resizing the GIF, click on “Apply” to bring out the changes. You can also preview it under the “Preview” header. However, in case where you don’t want to resize the GIF, just click on the “Skip” button to continue.

Finally, if everything is OK and the GIF is working, just click on “Save Changes” to make your profile picture animated/moving.

Note: You must again note the fact that you need to have Nitro for the GIF to work as Discord pfp.

Having set an animated pfp Discord, you must cross-check and see how it appears to others. Here’s how to do so.

How to view your animated profile picture on a Discord server?

To check if your Discord profile picture is animated or not, you need to go to a small Discord server. Once landed on a small Discord server, check the member list provided on the right sidebar. Scroll down the list until you see your profile. After you found it, click on your profile to expand it. Once expanded your profile, you can see that is animated.

How to get an animated pfp on Discord without Nitro?

Sorry to say, but there’s no other way around. You will not be able to get an animated profile picture on Discord without Nitro. Since, GIF will only work if you have Nitro and if you don’t have it, the GIF will not be animated and appears just as a normal image.