Microsoft explains why GIFs stopped working in Windows 11 emoji panel, and how to fix it

GIFs in the Windows 11 emoji panel stopped working because Google retired the Tenor API, but Microsoft has fixed it through Windows Update.

You may have noticed that GIFs in the Windows 11 emoji panel have recently stopped working for you. The good news is that it’s not a bug, and Microsoft has clarified the root cause of the problem, and what to do to fix it.

The culprit is Tenor, Google's GIF service, which retired its API a few days ago. Windows was pulling GIFs directly from Tenor's backend, so when the service went dark, the emoji panel started returning a "service is not available" error instead of loading anything. It's one of those “issues” that looks like a Windows bug but is actually a third-party dependency that Microsoft relies on, but doesn't control.

Microsoft has already pushed a fix. The company has switched to GIPHY as the new GIF provider, and the change shipped as part of the KB5095093 update, released on June 23, 2026. So, if you haven’t installed the latest C-release update on your Windows PC, just head over to Settings > Windows Update and install any available updates.

Once your Windows PC is up to date, you should start seeing GIPHY GIFs in the Windows 11 emoji panel.

The issue affects Windows 11 versions 24H2, 25H2, and 26H1. So, the majority of Windows 11 users will eventually encounter this issue if they don’t install the latest updates.

It’s a good idea to install the KB5095093 update regardless of whether you use the emoji panel or not, because it also fixes a known issue that was quietly eating up disk space for some users. On top of that, the update delivers a handful of new features, such as point-in-time system restore, a more flexible Windows Update pause mechanism, and more. So far we haven’t found any major issues with the update, so you have every good reason to install it.

Source: Microsoft

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Posted Thursday 2 July 2026 at 8:25 am AEST (my time).

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