Google Slides – Tips and Tricks

Google Slides Tips, Tricks & Hacks

In this article, I will show 10 tips and hacks in Google Slides to improve your Google Slides Presentation.

Tips 1 - Use Themes

Google Slides has a list of inbuilt default themes. To access the prebuilt default themes, go to the toolbar and click on ‘Theme‘.

Google slides theme tool-bar

The right side navigation pane will have a list of prebuilt default Google Slides Themes.

google slides default themes

Tips 2 - Use Explore button

If you do not wish to use the prebuilt themes of Google Slides, you can use ‘Explore‘ button and search for a particular topic and select a design.

google slides explore button

The right side navigation pane will have a list of prebuilt default  Layouts with your searched topics.

Google slides explore button layouts

Just select the layout of your choice and proceed.

google slides select themes from right navigation pane

Tips 3 - Duplicate the Objects

To copy an object like Texts, images or shapes, you will copy it first and then paste it.

Instead of this, the better way is to duplicate this. The shortcut is Ctrl + D for Windows & Cmd + D for Mac.

Tips 4 - Convert boring Texts to Amazing texts

Sometimes, users do not like the boring texts in your presentations. I will refer 4 websites which can instantly convert your boring texts to amazing texts such as Word Art. The websites are –

Just write your texts in anyone of these websites and they will generate awesome texts for you and you can use them in you Google Slides.

Tips 5 - Use transitions

Transition decides how your next slide will come with respect to the current slide.

While giving your presentation or during slideshow, if you wish to add nice transitions between slides, then you can use Transitions. Go to Slide -> Transition.

google slides transitions

You will get a list of options for your transitions in the right side navigation pane.

google slides transitions navigation pane

Change the Slide Transition from None  to any of the below and apply to any page or all the pages.

google slides various transitions options

Tips 6 - Use Presenter view

Presenter View gives you a lot of control during your presentation. 

To access Presenter view, go to toolbar and click on the dropdown just beside the ‘Present‘ and select ‘Presenter View‘.

google slides presenter view

You can refer notes, initiate Question Answer, Keep a track of Timing, See the next slides and so on.

Google slides presenter view options

Tips 7 - More Bullets

If you feel that there are only few bullet points options in Google Slides, then you are wrong.

Google Slides has a great feature of ‘More Bullets‘ using which you can select special bullet points that suits your style.

To access this, right click on the bulleted lists and select ‘More Bullets‘ option.

google slides more bullets

There are a list of special characters to choose from and you can use any one of these as your bulleted lists design.

Google Slides insert special characters bulleted points

Suppose, I like Cat emoji and if i select this emoji, it will add this emoji as my bullet points.

Google slides more bullets EMOJI

The bullet points is changed to cat emoji as shown below –

google slides emoji more bullets

Tips 8 - Download Free themes

You can download Free themes from websites like –

You can customize these free themes as per your liking and use them in your projects.

Tips 9 - Use Animated Gifs

Gifs are better to engage your audience. 

To search for a Gif, go to Google Slides Web Search feature and give the name of the image + gif at the end.

google slides search web images

Suppose, I want to search for a Dog Gif, I will search ‘Dog Gif’ and will insert a Gif image related to my search.

google slides gif search

Tips 10 - Use Masking

If you are not happy with your image, try masking it to a different shape.

Bonus Tips

I will give you 2 bonus tips –

  1. Use ‘Publish to the Web‘ feature of Google slides to share the link or the embed code with colleagues or students.
  2. Install Google Slides Add-Ons for your specific task. Go to Add-Ons and click on ‘Get Add-Ons‘. Search for your Add-Ons and install it.

Tutorials for all brains!