animate — Display Image Sequences as Animation

animate is ImageMagick's playback tool that displays a sequence of images or a ready-made animation in its own X11 window. Reach for it to quickly review animated GIFs, rendered frame sequences or time-lapses before you process them further. Note that animate needs a running X server and does not work headless. Under ImageMagick 7 you invoke it preferably as magick animate; the classic animate call stays compatible.

Basic Usage

animate <animation> — Display an animated GIF or multi-frame image.

animate animation.gif

animate <frame1> <frame2> <frame3> ... — Animate a sequence of image files.

animate frame-001.png frame-002.png frame-003.png

animate *.png — Animate all PNG files in alphabetical order.

animate frames/*.png

animate -delay <ticks> *.png — Set delay between frames (in 1/100 second).

animate -delay 10 frames/*.png

Playback Control

animate -loop <n> <animation> — Set number of loops (0 = infinite).

animate -loop 3 animation.gif

animate -delay <ticks> <animation> — Override frame delay (speed up or slow down).

animate -delay 5 animation.gif

animate -delay <ticks>x<tps> <animation> — Set delay with custom ticks-per-second base.

animate -delay 1x30 frames/*.png

animate -pause <seconds> <animation> — Pause for specified seconds between loops.

animate -pause 2 animation.gif

Display Options

animate -resize <width>x<height> <animation> — Resize animation for display.

animate -resize 640x480 animation.gif

animate -coalesce <animation> — Reconstruct frames before displaying (fix optimized GIFs).

animate -coalesce animation.gif

animate -geometry <width>x<height>+<x>+<y> <animation> — Set window size and position.

animate -geometry 800x600+100+50 animation.gif

animate -title "<text>" <animation> — Set the window title.

animate -title "Preview" animation.gif

animate -backdrop <animation> — Display with a backdrop covering the full screen.

animate -backdrop animation.gif

Keyboard Controls (during playback)

Space — Toggle play/pause.

Press Space to pause or resume playback

. (period) — Step forward one frame.

Press . to advance frame by frame

< / > — Slow down / speed up playback.

Press > to increase playback speed

q / Escape — Quit the animation viewer.

Press q or Escape to close

F1 — Open the built-in help menu.

Press F1 for keyboard shortcuts reference

Common Patterns

convert -delay 20 frames/*.png animation.gif && animate animation.gif — Create an animation from frames and immediately preview it.

convert -delay 20 render-*.png preview.gif && animate preview.gif

animate -delay 50 -loop 0 -resize 50% *.png — Preview frames at half size with slow playback.

animate -delay 50 -loop 0 -resize 50% timelapse-*.png

animate -coalesce -delay 10 animation.gif — Fix and speed up an optimized GIF for preview.

animate -coalesce -delay 10 animation.gif

Conclusion

animate is a pure preview tool with no destructive risk: it shows your image sequences but never alters files. For everyday use -delay, -loop, -resize and -coalesce are usually all you need, the last one playing optimized GIFs back cleanly. Keep in mind that animate opens a graphical X11 window – on a headless server without a display it simply does nothing; there you are better off using convert/magick for processing or copying the file to a workstation. Under ImageMagick 7, magick animate is the recommended invocation.