Writing

Getting GIF Backgrounds to Play in Warp

Aug 27, 2026 · 2 min read

I love customizing my terminal, and I wanted a lo-fi vibe GIF playing behind it. Warp lets you set a background image, so I pointed it at one, and it came up frozen on the first frame. I gave up on it for a while.

Then I thought about it. Haven't I been here before? When Gemini CLI kept forgetting which model I picked, I fixed it myself and it shipped for everyone.

So I took the same approach. I first checked whether other people wanted this too, and a few issues on Warp's repo were asking for exactly it. That was enough for me to open the code, find why the animation never advanced, write the fix, and send a PR.

One morning I woke up to find it merged, amazed, and then I waited two weeks for it to land in a release.

It's out now, and every Warp user can have animated backgrounds because I wanted one. Here's mine, finally moving:

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