How to add music to a google slide presentation

Google Slides provides an easy way to make and save presentations on the cloud so that you can access them from anywhere in the world. It’s a part of Google Workspace, a feature-rich, cloud-based office suite and a great Microsoft Office and Office 365 alternative. Since it’s cloud based, you won’t have to worry about losing important presentations as long as you remember how to log into your Google Account.

If your work involves creating presentations, and you want to add music, sound effects, voiceover, or even videos, add some zing and make them easier for your audience to understand. Here’s how to add audio to Google Slides.

How to insert audio in Google Slides

Unfortunately, you cannot directly upload audio from a Mac or PC to Google Slides. Instead, you’ll need to upload the audio file to Google Drive and add it later in Google Slides.

Uploading audio to Google Drive from a Mac or PC:

  1. Open your browser and go to Google Drive.
  2. Click New > File upload.
  3. Select the audio file on your computer and click Open.

All you have to do now is wait until the upload finishes. If the audio file is on your Android device, here's how to upload it to Google Drive.

Uploading audio to Google Drive from your Android device or iPhone

  1. Install Google Drive if you don’t have it already.
  2. Open the app and tap on the “+” icon > Upload.
  3. Find your audio file and tap on it to upload it to the drive

Now that you've uploaded the audio file to Google Drive, here's how to insert it in Google Slides.

Adding audio to Google Slides

  1. Click Insert in the upper-left corner of the menu bar.
  2. Click Audio.

    Google-slides-add-audio

  3. Search and select the audio file from the My Drive tab.
  4. Click Select.

You should now see the audio on the active slide. You can click and drag to reposition it wherever you like, so feel free to place the audio wherever.

The speaker icon is highly customizable. Click on the clip reveals the Format options pane where you can change the icon's size, color, position, and aspect ratio. One of the best features of format options is the option the change the volume of the audio before the presentation.

Use Spotify to add audio to your Google Slide presentation

If one of your crucial presentation points exists in a Spotify podcast or you want to add a specific track, you can add a Spotify link in Google Slides. While there are no dedicated Spotify or SoundCloud options in the insert menu, you can still add music tracks or playlist hyperlinks. Clicking on these links while presenting will take you to their respective websites, where you’ll need to play them manually. Nevertheless, it’s a helpful feature that can help you jump to the source without remembering it.

  1. Click Insert > Link or press the Ctrl + K key combination.
  2. Open the Spotify app and go to the playlist or track you want to add.
  3. Click on the three dots > Share > Copy Song Link.
  4. In Slides, paste the link, add text, and click Apply.

    add-link-to-slides-and-apply

Bonus: How to add video to Google Slides

Of course, audio might not be enough to give your slides that little something extra. Videos are a great way to make your content more engaging. There are three ways to add videos to Google Slides—the search section where you can directly search YouTube and add videos, YouTube URL, and a Google Drive section.

  1. Click Insert > Video.
  2. Search for the video by typing the keyword.
  3. Click the video you want to add and click the Select button.
    • You can also copy a video URL directly from YouTube, paste it into the By URL section, and click the Select button to add it.
  4. Lastly, adding videos to Google Slides from Google Drive is similar to inserting audio from the same. Here’s how the YouTube videos will look on a slide.

And just like that, you've made your presentation a little more awesome, or at least a little less dull.

Hey, Google! Add these features to Google Slides

microsoft-powerpoint-audio

It’s a bit jarring that you cannot add audio to Google Slides from your PC storage, unlike Google’s competitor Microsoft which allows you to do the same easily in PowerPoint Online. Unfortunately, both Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint miss out on the option to upload audio from phone storage.

If your presentations are lengthy, adding audio to Google Slides can be tedious — that’s if you have enough free storage on Google Drive to store the audio file. If you’re about to reach the standard 15GB threshold that Google allots to each Google account, you may need to temporarily delete or move your files to other cloud storage services.

Google Slides has got you covered with almost everything, but...

The Google Workspace comes with almost everything you’d expect in an office suite. However, applications like Google Slides or Google Docs may feel lackluster compared to Microsoft Office. There are perks of using cloud-based tools, but if you’re looking for a free and comprehensive office solution, LibreOffice is one of the best open source tools for Android, Windows, and Linux.

What is the easiest way to add music to a Google slide?

On your Google Slides window, tap on the Insert button amongst the top menu options and select the Audio option. Next, choose the audio you have already uploaded to your Google Drive. After your audio is on your slide, adjust the audio icon to make it look more synchronized with your presentation.

How do you make music play through the entire Google Slides presentation?

How to Automatically Play Audio in Google Slides.
Insert the audio file into the slide you want..
Right-click on the video and look for format options in the menu..
The Video playback option will become visible on the left side..
Select Play (automatically) from the option and the audio will play across the entire slide..

How do you add background music to slides?

To play a song across slides On the Insert tab, select Audio, and then Audio on My PC. In the file explorer, browse to the music file you want to use, and then select Insert. With the audio icon selected on the slide, on the Playback tab, select Play in Background.

How do you add music to Google Slides for free?

Adding audio to Google Slides Click Insert in the upper-left corner of the menu bar. Click Audio. Search and select the audio file from the My Drive tab. Click Select.