How to Open, Play and Convert SVGA Files

An SVGA file is an animation made for apps: live-room gifts, VIP badges, entrance effects and stickers. It will not open in an image viewer, because it needs an SVGA player. This guide shows how to open and play one in the browser, check it over your app's screen, fix a file that will not play, find a player for each platform, and make SVGA files from video or GIF.

What an SVGA file is

An SVGA file holds the frames of an animation as images, with their timing, and an SVGA player library draws them over whatever is on screen: a live room, a profile, a chat. Every frame keeps a full alpha channel, so glows and soft edges sit cleanly over video, which a GIF, with its on-or-off transparency, cannot do.

There are two versions. SVGA 1.x describes the animation in JSON inside a zip; SVGA 2.x files are binary ProtoBuf, compressed with zlib. Players for 2.0 can also play 1.x files, but 1.x players cannot play 2.x (SVGA-Format, read 2026-10-24).

Open and play an SVGA file online

Drop the file on VoltKit's free SVGA Player. It starts at once, with its sound in step with the picture:

Open your file in theSVGA Player

• It plays SVGA 2.0 files up to 60 MB, with their sound.
• Frames: Fit, Phone 9:16, Square and Wide 16:9, so you see how the animation fits the screens your app shows it on. The whole animation is always shown inside the frame.
• Backgrounds: transparency, six colours, or your own picture.
• Size, shape, frame rate, frames, length, sound tracks and layers at a glance.
• Nothing is uploaded: the file and your background picture stay on your device.

Browsers keep a page quiet until you tap or click it, so the first time a file with sound plays you may see Tap for sound. Once you tap, the sound joins the picture where it is.

Check it over your app's screen

Take a screenshot of the screen where the animation will play, choose it as the background, and switch the frame to Phone 9:16. You see where the gift lands, what it covers, and whether its soft edges blend in. Then try black, white and green screen: a dark fringe or halo around transparent edges shows up against at least one of them. Turn looping off to watch it once, the way a gift plays when it is sent.

When an SVGA file will not play

What you see	Why, and what to do
The file does not open	It may be an SVGA 1.x zip. Export it again as SVGA 2.0 from the tool that made it.
No sound	The file has no sound track (the player says so below the animation), or the browser is waiting for a tap: choose Tap for sound. Check that the device is not muted.
A layer is missing or looks different	Matte layers, where one layer masks another, are not drawn by the player, so an animation that relies on them can look different from your app.
It is slow to start	Large files take longer to load and decode. Keep gifts small: a lower frame rate, a narrower width and a crop to the content all help.

SVGA players for each platform

Your app plays SVGA with a player library. The original players are open source; check the status of the one you choose before you build on it.

Platform	Player	What its page says (read 2026-10-24)
Web	SVGAPlayer-Web	Apache-2.0; version 2.3.0 added audio; archived by its owner on 6 February 2023
Web	SVGAPlayer-Web-Lite	Under 60 KB; does not play SVGA 1.x or sound; Apache-2.0
Android	SVGAPlayer-Android	Sound through SVGASoundManager; can replace an element with a bitmap or add text above it; archived 6 February 2023
iOS	SVGAPlayer-iOS	Version 2.5.0 added matte layers and audio step-to-frame; archived 6 February 2023; installed with CocoaPods
Flutter	flutter_svga	Version 0.0.14, MIT; an active replacement for the archived svgaplayer_flutter; audio is not supported on Flutter Web

Test the original file in the browser first, then in the player your app ships, on a lower-end phone, during a call. The gift animation checklist covers dimensions, memory, queues and reduced motion.

Convert MP4, GIF or WebM to SVGA

SVGA Maker turns a short clip into an SVGA 2.0 file whose frames keep a full alpha channel. It is free with a signed-in account, within the daily and monthly limits shown on the form.

Convert a clip withSVGA Maker

• Input: MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV and AVI videos and GIFs, up to the size the form shows.
• Background: detected automatically, or black, white, green or blue keyed out to transparency; or keep the clip's own transparency.
• Frame rate: 12, 15, 20, 24 or 30 fps. Output width: 240, 300, 400, 500 or 640 px.
• Shape: the clip's own, or cut to 1:1, 9:16, 4:5, 16:9 or your own crop, so the SVGA is that shape rather than the clip with empty sides.

Unlike the player, SVGA Maker runs on VoltKit's conversion service: the clip is uploaded, only your account can see its history and download its files, and the upload is deleted about 48 hours after it was last used. Avoid uploading private or sensitive footage. When a conversion finishes, open the result in the SVGA Player, or use Preview in your SVGA Maker history, before you ship it.

SVGA to WebP, GIF or MP4

VoltKit has no SVGA-to-WebP, SVGA-to-GIF or SVGA-to-MP4 converter today. Keep the source video of every animation you make, and export WebP, GIF or MP4 from that source when you need another format. SVGA vs animated WebP explains how the formats differ for gifts and what to check in your player.

Lottie or After Effects to SVGA

There is no direct conversion here either. Render the After Effects composition, or the Lottie animation, to a video on a plain background, then convert that video with SVGA Maker and key the background out. When the motion is simple vector shapes, keeping Lottie can be the better choice: lottie-web plays After Effects animations exported as JSON with Bodymovin (lottie-web, read 2026-10-24).

Free gifts from the gift store

VoltKit's gift store sells 3D-style gift artwork for live and social apps, and some gifts are marked Free. Animated gifts come as SVGA or animated WebP, and each gift page lists the format you receive; the animated gifts page explains the choice.

• The pictures and animations on the website, including the SVGA previews that play with sound, are watermarked, lower-quality previews for choosing a gift.
• The original you download from Console → My gifts after buying or claiming a gift is full quality, with no watermark.
• To get a free gift, sign in, claim it, and download the original from My gifts.
• The gift licence lets you use a gift in your own apps, even as a paid gift; it does not allow reselling or sharing the file itself.

Play it in a live room

The RTC SDKs carry a room's video, voice and chat; your app plays the animation with an SVGA player when a gift event arrives over chat. There is no gift player in the SDKs, and the coins behind a gift are your app's. How to add gifts to an RTC app walks through the server-validated gift event, client playback and duplicate handling.