GIFs are a form of visual entertainment that’s completely unique to the Internet, and few websites are as well-suited for browsing GIFs endlessly as Tumblr. While the website offers a plethora of user-provided content, many users, myself included, spend the majority of their time on Tumblr doing nothing but looking at GIFs. With that in mind, Tumblr has decided to make the process a bit easier with Tumblr TV, a new GIF-centric browsing feature.
Just in case you weren’t seeing enough GIFs in your Tumblr dashboard, the site now has a dedicated channel that plays an endless stream of them. Tumblr TV, unveiled Thursday, allows Tumblr users to watch random GIFs that have been posted by the site’s users. Though Tumblr TV defaults to a random stream of GIFs — all of which have been posted to Tumblr at some point — you can also customize the type you want to see with the search function. For example, typing “cat GIFs” into the search bar, will turn up a virtually limitless outflow of cat GIFs. Like traditional TV streams, Tumblr TV will also allow you to pause, skip ahead or go back to previous GIFs. You can also heart or reblog posts you like and GIFs include a link back to the original post. Other than its main landing page, Tumblr users can also get to Tumblr TV from the site’s main search. Adding “gif” to the end of any search query will add a TV icon that redirects to Tumblr TV. Additionally, users can give their own personal page the Tumblr TV treatment by adding the name of their blog to the Tumblr TV URL (tumblr.com/tv/@yourblog).
