Voiceover enhances the quality of your Google Slides presentation. It adds context and useful information to explain what is on the slides. This gives your audience a great experience. This tutorial shows you step-by-step how to do a voiceover in Google Slides.
8 Steps to adding a voiceover to a Google Slides presentation
Google Slides doesn’t have a built-in capability to record over slides. You can only add voiceover to google slides by inserting an audio file saved in Google Drive to each slide.
You can add a voiceover to your Google Slides presentation using the following steps:
- Create a Google Slides presentation
- Write a script for audio files
- Record audio files for each slide
- Trim and save the audio files
- Convert the audio files to a format supported by Google Slides
- Upload the audio files to Google Drive
- Insert audio into the slides
- Configure play settings
Let’s get started.
Step #1: Create a Google Slides presentation
Before you can add a voiceover to a Google Slides presentation, you first need to create it.
Click the Google apps button in your Google account, which looks like nine dots in a square.
Click the Slides app icon from the apps list to open the Google Slides home screen.
Click the colorful cross in the Google Slides home screen to create a new blank presentation.
Or
Click a template in the Template gallery to start a new presentation based on a template.
Add slides, images and text to build your presentation.
Note: Another way to create a Google Slide presentation:
Open Google Drive.
Click + New in the top left of Google Drive.
On the shortcut menu, choose either Blank presentation or From a template.
Build your presentation by adding slides, text and images.
Step #2: Write a script for audio files
You clarify your thoughts and give structure to your content by writing a script.
Write a script as you refer to your presentation slides.
Give clear designations of where each segment of text goes.
For example, you can title the paragraphs, “Slide 1”, “Slide 2”, and so on. This helps you to know when to start and stop speaking while recording your audio.
The following is an example script:
Step #3: Record audio files for each slide
You can use the Windows Voice Recorder app or other preferred software to record audio clips.
Use a voice recorder such as the Windows Voice Recorder to record audio for each slide. Windows Voice recorder is a free app that comes with Windows. It has the necessary capabilities to record, trim, and share audio tracks. It can also flag important moments during recording.
We use Windows Voice Recorder App to explain how to record audio.
Ensure that you first connect a microphone to your computer.
Open Start in MS Windows.
Search for Voice Recorder and click the top result to launch the app.
Click the blue button to start recording or press Ctrl + R to start recording.
Once the recording starts, you can click the Flag button to add a marker to the audio file. This option does not interrupt the recording. During editing, this marking feature helps you to move to important parts of the audio file.
Click the Pause button to stop the recording without ending the session. You can click on Pause again to resume recording. This will not split the audio file. It remains a single file.
Click the Stop button to end the voice recording or press the Esc key, Spacebar, or Enter key.
This saves the audio as a .m4a file in the Sound Recordings folder in the Documents folder.
The Voice Recorder app takes you to the editing screen when you press the Stop button. Click the Play button to listen to the recording and note the sections that need trimming.
Step #4: Trim and save the audio file
The Voice Recorder app takes you to the editing screen when you finish each voice recording.
Click on the Trim button to display the trimming handles.
Click the blue handles and drag to trim the audio. We recommend that you trim the audio file to get rid of long pauses between sentences. These pauses are otherwise called “dead air.”
You also need to trim the start and end of your recording. This makes the audio start with the slide and end before you move to the next slide.
Save the trimmed audio file. We recommend that you Save a copy and keep the original file. You can later go back to it in case you made a mistake in the editing process.
Organize the audio files using a naming convention. This makes it easy to locate the audio file for each slide. For example, use slide numbers, such as “Audio Slide 1”, “Audio Slide 2”, and so on.
Step #5: Convert the audio file to a supported format
Google Slides only supports .wav and .mp3 audio formats. If your audio file is in any other format, convert them into a supported format. In this case, will convert the .m4a files into .mp3 format.
There are many converters out there that you can use to convert your audio from any format to .mp3 or .wav format.
We will use an Online Audio Converter to convert our audio files into .mp3 format.
Click the Open files button to find the audio clips you want to convert on your computer.
In the Open dialog box select all the files you want to convert. Do this by selecting the first audio, then selecting the last audio while holding down the Shift key.
Click the Open button to upload the files.
Select the mp3 format option and click the Convert button.
Download the converted files:
Step #6: Upload the audio files to Google Drive
To add an audio file to a Google Slide you must first upload it to Google Drive.
In your Google account click the Google apps button to open the Google apps list.
Then click the Drive app button to open Google Drive.
Click +New to create a new folder on Google Drive for your audio clips.
Click the New folder on the shortcut menu that pops up.
Type the name of the folder in the New folder box and click Create.
The new folder is created.
Double-click the new folder to open it.
Click +New in the top left of Google Drive and click File upload on the shortcut menu that appears:
In the Open dialog box navigate to the folder where your audio files are stored.
In the Open dialog box select all the files you want to use.
Do this by selecting the first audio, then selecting the last audio while holding down the Shift key.
Click the Open button to upload the files.
The files are uploaded to Google Drive.
You can also click and drag the audio clips to the folder in Google Drive.
Step #7: Insert audio into the slides
The next step is to insert the uploaded video into Google Slides.
Navigate to the Google Slides home screen and open the presentation you created in Step #1.
In the left navigation pane select the slide to which you want to add an audio clip.
On the main menu, click on the Insert tab.
Click the Audio option.
The files you uploaded should be under the Recent tab.
You can also locate them in the other tabs or use the search functionality.
Select each audio file at a time and click the blue Select button to add to the relevant slides.
This adds the speaker icon to the slide.
When you click on the play button, more options appear. This includes the progress bar, volume controller and Format options pane on the right of the slide.
Step #8: Configure the play settings
You now need to set the Format Options.
Expand the Audio playback by clicking on the arrow next to it.
Select On click if you want the audio to play when the slide is advanced by clicking.
Choose Automatically if you want the audio to start playing with the slide.
Set the volume when presenting by sliding the blue dot left or right.
The Hide icon when presenting option hides the speaker icon during presentation mode.
If you check the Loop audio checkbox, the audio clip repeats when it comes to an end.
The Stop on slide change is checked by default. It means the audio clip stops playing when the slide advances to the next slide.
Conclusion
This tutorial explained step-by-step how to add a voiceover in Google Slides.
The quality of your presentation is enhanced by voiceover. This gives your audience a great experience and ensures the wording that accompanies your slides is perfect.