Send GIFs with the GIF Helper

Every Family Chat server comes with a GIF Helper: a member of your own server that finds GIFs so nobody has to leave the chat to go looking. It is on by default, and a parent can turn it off at any time.

Sending a GIF

In any chat the GIF Helper is in, type !gif and what you are after:

!gif happy dance

It replies with a GIF a second or two later. A few things worth knowing:

/gif happy dance works exactly the same way, if that feels more natural.
!gif on its own gets you a short reminder of how to use it.
If it cannot find anything, it says so rather than posting something random.
Send a lot of commands very quickly and it goes quiet for a moment. That is deliberate — it stops one person filling a chat with GIFs.

Getting it into a chat

The GIF Helper joins your family’s group chats on its own and introduces itself when it arrives.

It deliberately stays out of one-to-one chats between two family members — a private conversation should not quietly gain a third participant. If you do want GIFs in one, invite @gif-helper:YOUR-SERVER from your chat app (replace YOUR-SERVER with your family’s server address, the one you signed in with). It accepts any invite from someone on your own server, and ignores invites from anywhere else.

What it can see

This is the part worth reading carefully, because it is the one place Family Chat’s encryption has a member you did not add yourself.

The GIF Helper is an account on your server with its own device, like a phone or a laptop. In an encrypted chat it has been invited to, it can read the messages in that chat. There is no way around that: noticing !gif means reading what was said.

What it does with that:

It looks at each message for !gif or /gif, and ignores everything else.
It stores no messages, anywhere.
It writes no message text to any log — not what was said, and not what was searched for.
Only the words after !gif leave your server. They go to the Family Chat control panel, which asks the GIF provider on your behalf. The provider never learns your family, your chat, or who searched.
It is not in any chat it has not been invited to, and it never joins chats on other servers.

Turning it off

A parent can switch it off for the whole family:

Sign in to the control panel
Go to Settings
Under GIF Helper, choose Turn off

Within about a minute it leaves every chat and stops answering. Turn it back on and it rejoins.

Choosing how strict the filter is

The same page has a Content filter for the results it will post:

Level	Use it when
High (default)	The strictest filtering. Sensible for a family with young children
Medium	A middle setting
Low	The least filtering

There is no “off” — Family Chat does not offer unfiltered results.