Animated version of PNG images, under the Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG) file format.

Unlike GIF, which is restricted to 256 colors and has only index transparency (one palette color is mapped to transparent), APNG supports 24-bit images with 8-bit transparency, allowing for much higher quality animated images than GIF. APNG is backwards compatible with the traditional non-animated PNG format; any application that does not support APNG will only show the first frame and ignore the other frames.

All of the five major desktop browsers support APNG:

• Firefox (since version 3 on June 17, 2008)
• Safari (since version 8.0 on October 16, 2014)
• Google Chrome and Chromium (since version 59 on June 5, 2017)
• Opera (added support to the original Presto-based Opera in version 9.5 on June 12, 2008; regained support in the current Chromium-based Opera in version 46 on June 22, 2017)
• Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based Edge since January 15, 2020)

Additionally, all of the four major mobile browsers currently fully support APNG: Safari (iOS), Firefox (Android), Samsung Internet (Android), and Opera Mobile. The version of Edge using EdgeHTML and its predecessor Internet Explorer, both of which are no longer actively developed by Microsoft, are the only major desktop browsers to not support it.

Despite increasing mainstream support, APNG remains a non-standard extension of the PNG file format, as the PNG Group (who made the PNG format) refused to recognize it as official. Some of the developers of PNG made the Multiple-image Network Graphics (MNG) format for a PNG-styled lossless image format that supports animations, but MNG received little support.

See also:

• animated
• flash
• Wikipedia article on APNG