Timelapses
First pixel 3 August 2026, 00:17 UTC · rebuilt after every UTC midnight
Every placement since the first one is in an append-only log, so a timelapse is just that log replayed onto a blank canvas. Frames are spaced evenly over placements rather than over the clock, because spacing them by time would spend most of the animation on whichever hours everyone was asleep.
A single day starts from the state the canvas opened on that morning rather than from empty, so it shows that day's changes in context. GIF is a natural fit here: the canvas is already sixteen palette colours, which is exactly what the format stores, so nothing is quantised and there is no video encoder involved.