Why is my Discord emoji too big?

The usual causes

• The canvas is larger than 128×128 (a 512 px GIF is 16 times the pixels).
• Too many frames — long clips add up quickly.
• Photographic colors or gradients, which GIF compresses badly.
• A background that changes every frame instead of transparency.

The fix, in order

1. 1
   Resize to 128×128

   Crop to the subject first.

2. 2
   Make the background transparent

   Transparent pixels compress far better.

3. 3
   Use one shared palette

   Then try 128 or 64 colors.

4. 4
   Drop every other frame

   Double the delay so the speed stays the same.

The free Discord emoji resizer does all four automatically in your browser and shows the final size.