How to Automatically Play Audio in Google Slides

Google Slides is an excellent platform for creating presentations and engaging your audience. While it is a powerful tool, one of the most significant issues users might encounter is that Google Slides does not support audio files.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to work around the issue and add some music to make your presentation even better.

Read on for detailed step-by-step explanations on adding your favorite songs to Google Slides presentations.

How to Add Audio to a Google Slides Presentation

Before looking at how to play audio files automatically, let’s first go over how you can add audio to your Google Slides presentations in the first place.

Note: This section explains how to add audio to individual slides and does not play through an entire slideshow.

There are two ways to add audio to slides in your presentation: online music streaming services or YouTube.

Method 1: Add a Link to a Slide from an Online Music File

You can add music to Google Slides presentations quickly and easily by adding a link to a track you want to hear in the slide’s background. You can add music from any online service, including SoundCloud, Spotify, and Grooveshark.

Here is how to do it:

1. Create a new Google Slides presentation in your browser and find the slide to which you want to add the music.
2. Click on the Insert option and select Text box.
   
3. Open your browser, go to your preferred music streaming service, find the song you want to add, and copy the link.
4. Open the slide again and paste the link into your created text box.
5. Resize the text box by clicking the arrow tool, then move it wherever you want it to appear on the slide.
   
6. Play the presentation by clicking View and selecting Present in the pop-up menu. Click on the link, and the music will start in a new tab of your browser.
   

If you don’t want the link displayed in the text box, or if it’s just an eyesore, you can place an image over it to make it invisible. Here is how to do it:

1. Open the menu, select “Insert,” then click on “Image.”
   
2. Find the photo or image you want to add to your slide. Click on it and hit “Select.”
3. Select the “arrow tool” to resize and move the image where you want it.
   
4. While your image is selected, click “Link” in the toolbar.
   
5. Once you’ve pasted the link into the box, click “Apply.”
   

After doing that, the link will become invisible and can be activated only when you click the image.

Adding Music from YouTube to a Google Slides Presentation

You can also add music from YouTube to your presentation by adding a link, as explained above, but the other method is to add a YouTube video directly to your slide. You should try it with shorter music videos to underscore a point or introduce new ideas. The video will play until you advance to the next slide.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Open the slide to which you want to add music and select “Insert.” Choose “Video” in the menu.
   
2. Open YouTube and search for the video you want.
   
3. Click the video of your choice and hit “Select” to add it to the slide.
   
4. Use the “arrow tool” to resize the video to the smallest size possible and place it where you want.
5. Play the video by clicking on it.

This method offers a quick and easy way to add music to your presentation, and since YouTube has a wide selection, you should have no trouble finding the perfect music for your slideshow.

How to Automatically Play Audio in Google Slides

We’ve learned how to add music to a Google Slide presentation that executes manually, but what about when you want to play audio automatically? The autoplay option can activate a video or a song on a single slide or the whole presentation. You can set that by doing the following:

Single Slide Autoplay

1. Insert the audio file into the slide you want.
   
2. Right-click on the video and look for format options in the menu.
   
3. The Video playback option will become visible on the left side.
   
4. Select Play (automatically) from the option and the audio will play across the entire slide.
   

Entire Presentation Autoplay

Unfortunately, there is no genuine way to play audio through an entire presentation like you can with each slide individually, even though that was a workaround. Regardless, two options exist for playing audio continuously through your entire slideshow production.

1. For manual audio control: Open a new tab with the audio source and play it when ready. The audio will be heard while the presentation is running. If you have sound effects in your production, those will still be audible along with the audio source in the other tab.
2. For automatic audio control: Open a new tab with your audio source just like the manual audio option above, except you’ll also need to record the slideshow while the audio is playing. This can be done using a Chrome extension like Screencastify, which will simultaneously record the video and the audio from the other tab.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know how to add music to your slides, you can use your creativity to impact the auditorium profoundly. Choosing the right song for a presentation can make all the difference in how people perceive it. With a bit of practice, you will quickly become a master presenter.

Do you have any other tips for creating a fantastic Google Slides presentation? Let us know in the comments!