Windows Animated Cursor

File Format
Name	Windows Animated Cursor
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics Windows Animated Cursor
Extension(s)	.ani
PRONOM	fmt/386

Windows Animated Cursor Format (ANI) is an animated image format, mostly used for cursors (mouse pointer graphics) on Microsoft Windows.

Format

ANI files use the RIFF container format. Individual frames can be encoded in ICO format, CUR format, or a "raw pixel data" format that does not seem to be fully documented.

Identification

Files begin with 'R' 'I' 'F' 'F' ?? ?? ?? ?? 'A' 'C' 'O' 'N'.

Software

• Deark
• XnView

Sample files

• http://cd.textfiles.com/desktopworks/CURSORS/
• http://www.anicursor.com/diercur.html
• http://www.angelfire.com/my/plinth/cursors.html
• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/image/abydos/abydos.ani

Links

• GFF Format Summary: Microsoft RIFF (from archive.org)
• Wikipedia article