Enable gif backgrounds for Microsoft Teams

You can indeed use GIFs as animated backgrounds.
1. Put any image you want to use in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads.

2. If the image is a filename.gif file, rename it filename.jpg or filename.png

3. Copy the image and rename the copy filename_thumb.jpg or png

4. Restart Teams.

So all we're doing is to replace the .gif file extension (which Teams does not recognize) with a .png or .jpg extension (which it does recognize) and create a copy of the image for teams to use as the thumbnail.

MS could support gif files by just including gif in the recognized filetypes. The handling of gif files is obviously already there.

TIP!

Slow, smooth and seamlessly looping animations are best as fast ones or ones that restart over and over again can be very distracting. I've used GIFs upwards of 25+Mb in size in meetings with 12-15 participants without any issues.