How to Add Audio, Music & Voice-Overs to Google Slides

When crafting a compelling presentation, you likely dedicate considerable time to perfecting fonts, layouts, and images. These elements are crucial, of course, but adding music to your Google Slides can also enhance your message. Music adds enjoyment and sets the right mood, thus ensuring your presentation better resonates with your audience. In this tutorial, we’ll explore how to add audio into Google Slides to create a more lasting impact.

Can you add music to Google Slides?

Absolutely! You can effortlessly insert audio into Google Slides, even after setting up your visuals. With some basic recording knowledge and a few simple steps, you can enrich your presentation with clear and crisp audio. All you need is a high-quality audio file, which you can either record yourself using platforms like Waveroom (more on that later) or source from the internet—just ensure you have the right to use it.

Why add music to Google Slides at all?

Audio complements visual content by providing additional layers of information. It can offer detailed explanations or background context, filling gaps where video might not be the best medium. This makes understanding easier, as listening requires less effort than reading, allowing your audience to absorb information more quickly and effortlessly.

With the right audio, you inject personality and creativity into your presentation. Traditional slideshows can be monotonous, but interjecting audio keeps your audience captivated.

Another perk of adding audio alongside text content is that it can reduce the stress of presenting in person. Music provides smooth transitions between slides, creating a natural rhythm that guides your audience.

Audio requirements for Google Slides

• WAV or MP3 format. WAV files offer high-quality sound, while MP3 files are more compact for online sharing. For background music, both formats work well, and you can also link to music from platforms like Spotify.
• 100MB presentation size limit.

How to add music to Google Slides from Google Drive

The first way to add audio to your presentation is to use a file on your Google Drive. Here’s how.

1. Select a track from your collection or find royalty-free music from sites like YouTube Audio Library, Epidemic Sound, Premium Beat, or Soundstripe.
2. Sign in to your Google Drive.
3. Click ‘New’.

4. Select ‘File upload’ and choose your audio file.

5. Once uploaded, set the sharing permissions to ‘Anyone with the link’ and ensure it's set to ‘Viewer’.

6. Open your Google Slides presentation.

7. Click on ‘Insert’ in the toolbar.

8. Select ‘Audio’.

9. Choose your audio file from Google Drive.

Editing audio in your presentation

You can customise your audio by adjusting playback options, size, colour, and effects:

1. Click on the audio icon in your slide.

2. Navigate to the toolbar and choose ‘Format options’ or right-click the icon and select ‘Format Options’.

3. Use the panel that appears on the right to control audio playback, size and rotation, recolour, and adjustments like transparency, lightness, and contrast. You can also enable or disable effects like drop shadow and reflection.

Playing audio in Google Slides

How your audio plays depends on the playback settings:

• Automatically: The audio starts playing as soon as the slide appears.
• On click: The audio plays when you click on it during the presentation.
• Loop audio: To ensure continuous playback, check the ‘Loop Audio’ box.
• Stop on slide change: To stop audio when changing slides, ensure this box is checked.

How to add audio to Google Slides from a URL

To add sound from online sources:

1. Find the soundtrack and ensure it’s not copyrighted and has appropriate licensing.
2. Copy the link of the track.
3. In your presentation, go to the slide where you want to add the music, click on ‘Insert’, then ‘Link’. Paste the link and click ‘Apply’.
4. During your presentation, click the link to open the soundtrack in a new window or tab, where you can control playback.

How to adding voice-overs to Google Slides

To add your own voice-over to the presentation, you can use software like Waveroom and record and save your voice a WAV file. Here's how to record only audio in Waveroom:

1. Log in to your Waveroom account or sign up to create an account.
2. If you previously recorded with Waveroom, click + at the top left corner to create a new recording room. If you’re a new user, skip this step.
3. Select your microphone and headphones and disable your camera in the Devices tab under the video preview.

4. Head over to the Record tab and disable video recording by toggling it off.

5. (Optional) Enable additional features in the AI tab. Toggle on Remove Noise to cancel out extraneous sounds, Transcribe Speech to convert speech to text, and/or Create Summary to summarise what’s been said during the recording.

6. Click the Start Test Record button to check how you're going to sound or go right to Start Meeting to start recording.

7. When you’re done, click the Stop button to end the meeting.

Wait a few seconds until the recording is saved. Once you see the Upload Completed notification at the bottom right corner, click the X sign to leave the room.

After that, you will be taken to a page with a list of all recordings. Here, you can play and download them.

💡Tip: You can apply AI features to your recordings if you skipped this step before recording. At the bottom of the page, click Denoise to remove background noise from the audio, click Transcription to transcribe the audio to text, and/or click Summary to create an overview of the key points of your meeting.

That’s it! Your audio recordings are saved in the highest possible quality. Edit, share, and listen to them any time you want.  

Then just follow the same process to upload the file to Drive and insert it into your presentation.

How to add music on mobile

While the mobile app doesn’t support direct audio insertion, you can use a workaround:

1. Use the Google Drive app to upload your audio file.
2. Tap the more icon next to the file, select ‘Copy link’.
3. In your presentation, add a text or image item, select it, then use ‘Insert Link’ to paste the copied link.

Bonus: How to add YouTube videos to your slides

To add audio to your Google Slides via a YouTube video, follow these steps:

1. Find the video you want to use. Note specific start and end times if you only want to include a portion of the video.
2. Click the ‘Share’ button on the YouTube video and copy the provided link.
3. Open the relevant slide in your presentation, go to ‘Insert’ in the menu, and choose ‘Video’. Paste the YouTube link and click ‘Insert’.
4. Once inserted, resize and reposition the video on the slide as needed.
5. Choose how the video plays:

• On click: The video plays when you advance the slide.
• Automatically: The video starts playing once the slide appears.
• Manual: The video only plays when you specifically click on it.

Adding audio to Google Slides is a simple process: upload your audio to Drive, insert it into Slides, and adjust as needed. High-quality recordings elevate your presentation’s professionalism. Whether using pre-recorded tracks or your narration, the added audio will make your presentation more engaging and accessible.