I was wondering how this can be done, I’ve seen it on other Discourse communities, was wondering how I can also do this on my local Discourse instance. I basically want it so the GIF will automatically play.
You want this Theme Component:
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Yeah I have that installed, my problem is I want the GIF to play as a post/topic thumbnail, was wondering if that’s possible?
This is how it works out of the box: it’s animated.
What’s the issue?
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so what was missing in your description of the problem was “Topic List”. 
this might be possible but you’d need to use a Theme Component to expose the Topic’s image url.
And I believe it would only pick it up if it was in the OP.
This would really slow down the loading of Topic List.
Ahh, what theme component do you recommend?
I wouldn’t recommend doing this, because it is not scalable.
You would have to build this yourself. It’s not that hard, good learning exercise.
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Would it be hard to build?
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There would be a learning curve to begin with but this project would be a good first project.
Read more here: Beginner's guide to developing Discourse Themes
Go for it then share your solution with the community!
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