Context > preview to display animation, of animated gifs?

Question

I'm using preview in my context menu which opens the default image viewer, Windows Photo Viewer.

Actual behavior

When opened, an animated gif file is opened, but the animation is not played--it's like the image is paused.

Desired behavior

I want Windows Photo Viewer to go through the animation.

Questions

Is the desired behavior possible via Windows Photo Viewer? If not, can I replace the preview action with another action--have preview open a different app? If so, which softwares take hotkeys, like the left-right d-pad arrow keys to go to the next/previous image?

Answer 1

This is a pretty common issue, and has a few solutions online. Here's one I like from github.

https://github.com/Corgano/Windows7GifViewer/blob/master/Windows7GifViewer.exe

Go there, click "View Raw" to download the EXE, and run it.