Scrub your GIFs with Twitter’s new ScratchReel tool

13 Nov 2015

Twitter has revealed a new tool for allowing users to scrub GIFs back and forth with their fingers.

If you are already mesmerised by GIFs then your life is about to change, with hours of fun to be had thanks to a new GIF forward and rewind feature created by Twitter called ScratchReel, which has been spotted in the wild.

GIFs are fun and a great form of expression, but now creators can add forward and rewind features via ScratchReel, a new social creation tool.

The feature works on the web and on Twitter’s mobile apps and allows you to basically move GIFs and videos forward and back using your finger or cursor.

It is understood the capability emerged from a start-up called SnappyTV, which Twitter acquired in 2014.

SnappyTV provides fun editing tools for consumers and businesses that lets them jazz up videos to make them more popular on social media.

Twitter has been testing the new feature called ScratchReel and one was spotted in the wild on Twitter showing a video of surfer and using your finger, cursor or the scrubbing symbol at the bottom left of the screen you could forward and rewind within the GIF.

Touch editing image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com