Is there a way to save a gganimate object as a HTML page with animation control buttons?

Question

Goal

To control the animation using start/stop/pause buttons.

Problem

The animation package can save the created animation as a HTML page using the saveHTML() function (example here). But it requires "expr = an R expression to be evaluated to create a sequence of images" as the first argument.

However, gganimate creates a gganim object, and I can't seem to find a function that can save the animation as a HTML page with buttons. The available anim_save() function does not save as HTML. Is there a workaround to do that?

Example code for animation

If you have any ideas please share. For your reference, I'm putting below the gganimate code from its website.

library(ggplot2)
library(gganimate)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), mpg)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  # Here comes the gganimate code
  transition_states(
    gear,
    transition_length = 2,
    state_length = 1
  ) +
  enter_fade() +
  exit_shrink() +
  ease_aes('sine-in-out')

Answer 1

The following worked for me in RStudio, though I didn't see "current" listed as an option for device in gganimate::animate:

library(gganimate)
library(animation)

# name the above gganimate example as p
p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), mpg)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  transition_states(
    gear,
    transition_length = 2,
    state_length = 1
  ) +
  enter_fade() +
  exit_shrink() +
  ease_aes('sine-in-out')

# pass the animate command to saveHTML
saveHTML(animate(p, 
                 nframes = 10,         # fewer frames for simplification
                 device = "current"), 
         img.name = "gganimate_plot", 
         htmlfile = "gg.html")

I got a html file with animation control buttons & an image folder with 10 png files.