how to add audio to google slides

Adding audio to your Google Slides creates a professional presentation that helps improve viewer engagement. Your audio can be made up of voiceover narration, music, and contain sound effects too.

Google Slides does not have audio recording built-in, but the good news is it's not that difficult to add audio to Google Slides.

To have a narration with your presentation, you have to create the audio file(s) separately and then upload the file(s) to add audio to your Google Slides. Or alternatively, you can use a screen recording plugin like Vidyard that will let capture your presentation on your desktop screen while you speak over it and record the whole thing to share with others.

Don't worry — it's easier than you might think. We're going to show you exactly how to add voice and audio to Google Slides presentations.

4 Steps to Add Voice Over to Google Slides

1. How to Use Google Slides →
2. Matching Audio Narration with the Slide Presentation →
3. Recording Your Voice →
4. Adding Audio Files to Google Slides →

1. How to Use Google Slides

Google Slides is an alternative to MS PowerPoint that is free to use as long as you have a Google account. A Google account gives you free access to Google Drive cloud services and all of the Google Tools. If you have a Gmail account you already have the ability to use Google Slides.

If you need a Google account and do not want a Gmail account, just go to google.com and click the "Sign In" icon in the upper right corner of the browser window and then select "Create account" to set up a new account. You can link your existing email account to your Google account. It does not have to be a Gmail account.

Alternatively, you can get a free Gmail account and never use it except to give you access to Google Drive and Google Tools, including Google Slides, if that is all you want to do.

After you establish your Google (or Gmail) account you will see a tiny icon made up of nine tiny squares in a grid pattern located in the upper right corner of an open browser window on Google.com. Click this icon and it will show the choices of Google Tools available. Scroll down to select Google Slides.I prefer to make the slides first and then create the audio; however, you can do this in reverse and make the audio first, then the slides, or you can make each slide and add audio to them, one by one.

Let's assume you have a Google Slides presentation already made and you just need to add audio to it.

2. Matching Audio Narration with the Slide Presentation

If you want to use narration for a full continuously-playing slideshow, write the script that you will use for all the slides and then watch the slide presentation playback as a slide show to get the timing or your narration to match the progression of the slide as the slideshow plays.

Speak in a natural voice at a calm, understandable speed. You will want to edit your script and/or change the playback speed of the slides to match your audio recording of the narration.

Practice reading your script with the slides running in the slideshow mode until you can read the script perfectly. It is easier to work with the audio file for a slideshow that plays without stopping if you can record the audio narration in one take.

If your presentation is long or the viewer uses self-pacing to manually click through the slides, you can break up the audio recording into sections or have a separate audio file for each slide. In that case, you need to make sure the audio recordings match, in terms of sound quality.

You want to listen to the audio carefully to be certain that the narration playback sounds nice and smooth to the listener. You want to avoid any abrupt volume or tonal changes between slides that may create a distraction or startle the listener.

Problems may arise if the audio recording sessions are in different places under different sounding conditions. To avoid problems, try to record in the same way and the same place if you plan to use separately recorded audio files together in the same presentation.

3. Recording Your Voice

To record your voice, you can use a free-to-use recording application such as Audacity or a free recorder such as Movavi or another free online recorder. Also, most smartphones have an app to record your voice, which is easy to use.

Another option is to use the Vidyard plugin for more of a live presentation recording. Vidyard is a browser plugin that has screen recording capabilities, which allows you to record a live voiceover to your Google Slides presentation and then save and share the video with others. You can screen record on Windows or Mac with this plugin.

Be sure to record your voice in a quiet place with little or no background noises when trying to add audio to Google Slides presentations.

Speak clearly and directly into the microphone in a clear natural voice – a headset microphone is great for this kind of narration work. Do not overdrive the recording by speaking too loudly and also do not speak too softly. Excessively quiet audio requires adding too much gain later (to increase the sound volume), which may introduce unwanted noise, making it difficult for your audience to follow along and even harder to create captions or a transcript with transcription software.

Test the sound of your voice in different places and with different levels of speaking volume, close to the mic and further away, until you find a nice way to make a narration that sounds good upon playback. Be sure to record your voice in the audio file type of either .mp3 or .wav format, which is what Google Slides can use.

If you want to add background music or sound effects you will want to use a program like Audacity or another audio editing software to bring those things together into one audio file as a balanced audio mix. If you are getting serious about this effort, review our tips on how to create a professional voiceover recording home studio.

4. How to Add Audio to Google Slides

Once you create your audio file(s), then you upload the files to your Google Drive so that they are stored on the Google Cloud and available for Google Slides to access them. Most virtual conference platforms and webinar software will allow you to upload pre-recorded presentations with voiceovers.

Upload the Audio File(s)

To upload audio files to Google Drive, select the triangular Drive icon from the Google Tools menu (to see the tools menu use the grid button in the upper right-hand corner of your browser) and then click on the "New" button and select "File Upload" and then choose the audio file from your device. Wait for the upload to complete before you attempt to use the audio file.

Share the Audio File(s)

Share the audio file by right-clicking on its filename on Google Drive and then click on "Share." Allow access to anyone with the link to remove restrictions on the use of this file. This gives access to the audio files to your Google Slides viewers. Be careful. This important step is often overlooked. When you share a Google Slides presentation without also sharing the audio files, your viewers can't hear them.

Insert the Audio File(s) to Google Slides

Open the Google Slides file that you want to use or create a new one. Choose the slide where you want to insert the audio file. Then, from the menu choices select "Insert" and scroll down to select "Audio." Click the audio file you saved to your Google Drive to select it and then click the "Select" button.

Once you have done this, you will see a little speaker-shaped icon appear on your slide. You can play the audio by clicking on the speaker icon. You can change the placement of the speaker icon by dragging it to a different position on the page.

Audio Format Adjustments

Within Google Slides there are some basic audio adjustments available. When the audio object is selected you can click on "Format Options" in the toolbar. There you will see the default settings appear and the adjustments that can be made.

The adjustments include the volume of the audio file playback. You can choose whether the audio file starts automatically or if it requires a click to start it. If you choose "start playing automatically," then you can also choose to hide the speaker icon since it is no longer necessary.

You can loop the audio if you want it to continuously repeat. You can stop the audio on a slide change if you only want the audio to be available for just one slide. If you uncheck this box not to stop audio on slide change, the audio will continue to play when the slide changes.

Audio Preview

While you are in the editing mode making slides, you can preview the inserted audio by clicking on the speaker icon and then clicking on the play button.

Watch this video by Stephen Kwiecinski. He shows three different ways to add a voiceover to Google Slides using Audacity.

Watch this video by Caitlin Dickinson. She shows how to use your device's installed microphone and a free online recorder website (we recommend using Vidyard for easy screen recording and adding voice over to Google Slides). This method does not require a download of any software. She shows how to add narration to each slide and how to make simple edits to remove any excessive silence from each voice recording. Her process is super easy and you can see how she records narration for each slide.

BONUS for Teachers

New EdTech Classroom's Sam Kay shows how to use free Google Slides Add-Ons to make interactive slide presentations. Add-Ons are made by third-party software developers to add features and make your slide presentations more interesting. He suggests you use Pear Deck to add audio to your slides.

Conclusion

Don't be intimidated, even if you never made any voiceover recordings. After a little bit of practice, you will get confident fast. It is fun to add audio and voice to your Google Slides. As you become more confident you can learn how to mix in background music as well.

If you have issues with syncing audio and video recorded separately check out 11 ways on how to do it.

Have more questions about recording voice overs? Check out our guide to the best voice over training courses to improve your skills.

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Hi, I'm Scott Winstead, an e-Learning technology geek with 20 years of experience. Follow this blog for opinions on blended learning and flipped classroom techniques, reviews of home studio equipment, and tips for voice-over actors and digital audio content makers, technology how-tos, and more!

how to add audio to google slides

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