How to add video to Google Slides: Two easy methods

A video embedded in a presentation can deliver crucial information, provide evidence to support your arguments, or just serve as a playful interlude to keep your audience awake. 

If you make your presentations using Google Slides, the options for inserting videos are rather limiting. While Microsoft PowerPoint affords multiple ways to insert a video file into a slide, Google’s slide maker only gives you two options. You can supply a YouTube URL or get the file from Google Drive. 

Below, we’ll explain how to use both video insertion methods, and ways to get your screen recordings, stock footage, and camera roll files inserted into Google Slides presentations. 

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How to add a YouTube video to Google Slides

YouTube is a Google product and the most popular video sharing tool on the web. So, it’s no surprise that pasting in a YouTube URL is the easiest way to add a video to a Google Slides presentation. 

Here’s how you do it: 

1. Go to the desired slide, then click on the Insert tab, and choose Video from the dropdown menu. 

2. Enter the YouTube URL if you know it, or use the search bar to find the video you’re looking for. You’ll see YouTube’s search results appear, and you can select the video you want to add to your presentation and click Insert. 

3. You’ll see the video appear on the slide with playback options in the right sidebar: 

How to add a saved video to Google Slides

If you want to add a screen recording or any other video that’s saved on your computer, you’ll need to move the file onto your Google Drive first. If you have a stock video in mind, you’ll need to download it to your computer first, then upload it to Google Drive, too. Here’s how: 

1. Create a destination folder on Google Drive. This is where you will upload the video from your computer first. 

2. Having found the file on your desktop, you can either: 

• Drag and drop it into the new Google Drive folder: 

• Or, upload it from Google Drive. In this case, from the Google Drive folder, go to New > File Upload: 

• Then find and select the file on your computer, and click Upload (we’re showing the procedure on a Mac, but it’s similar on a PC computer):

• The video should show up on Google Drive: 

3. In Google Slides, open the presentation and find the desired slide. Then, click on the Insert tab, and choose Video. In the screen that appears, you’ll see a “Google Drive” tab. Click on this tab:  

4. Find the folder you created earlier on Google Drive, select the video file, and click Insert: 

5. The video and playback settings should appear in your Google Slides deck: 

How to edit a video and configure playback options in Google Slides 

Google Slides offers a limited selection of video formatting options. These show up automatically on the right sidebar after you insert the video and include: 

• Changing playback start options 
• Altering video size, and position
• Dropping a shadow in the video
• Embedding alt text 

Changing video playback options in Google Slides

First things first, you should decide when you want the video to start. You can set playback to commence with a click, automatically when you get to the slide, or manually, by clicking the Play button. A handy dropdown menu gives you all these options: 

You can also decide which part of the video will play by changing the start and end times: 

How to configure the video size and position

There are three ways to change the size of a video you’ve inserted into Google Slides. The easiest, but least accurate, is to simply drag the corners to make the video appear larger or smaller on the slide. 

For greater precision, you can change the width and height in the formatting sidebar. 

Alternatively, you can increase/decrease the width and height scale percentages. To avoid stretching the video, you can lock the aspect ratio: 

To change the position of the video, simply drag it anywhere you like on the slide. 

Unfortunately, there is no way to rotate the video in Google Slides, and the corresponding functions are grayed out in the formatting sidebar.  

How to add a shadow behind a video

If you want to jazz up your slides with a bit of depth and realism, you can add a shadow behind the inserted videos. The formatting sidebar lets you drop a shadow with the check of a box. Then, you can tweak the shadow’s opacity, position (angle), size (distance), and blur radius with simple slider controls.  

Make Google Slides presentations faster with Plus AI 

By leveraging the power of AI, you can make Google Slides presentations faster and better. 

Manual slides creation entails various time-consuming tasks, such as formatting or creating a presentation outline. By spending hours mapping the content to slides, picking out fonts, tweaking margins, etc, you leave yourself less time to focus on what matters most — the quality of content and graphics. With a program like Plus AI, you can leave all the tedious tasks to artificial intelligence and spend more time refining the message of your presentation. 

Plus AI works as an add-on in Google Slides and auto-generates entire presentations, complete with professional templates, relevant graphics, attractive layouts, and content that informs without overwhelming. 

How Plus AI auto-generates presentations in Google Slides

There are three ways Plus AI can create a presentation for you. If you’re not sure where to start, or want to get over writer’s block, you can prompt Plus AI with a description of your presentation. Plus AI will first produce a presentation outline you can customize, then generate the deck. The output will be a solid starting point you can edit to your liking. 

On the other hand, if you already have materials on which to base a slide deck, you can upload the file to Plus AI (or copy-paste select parts of the text) and get a complete presentation in the output. 

For greater precision and control, you can also prompt Plus AI slide-by-slide. This is a suitable method to try if you’ve already mapped content to the slides. 

Regardless of the prompting method, you can edit the AI-generated presentations manually or remix, reformat, or rewrite slides with Plus AI’s help. 

FAQs about adding videos to Google Slides 

As we conclude this guide, we’ll answer a few common questions about adding videos to Google Slides. 

How do you put a video of yourself on Google Slides?

1. Save the video on your computer or mobile device.  
2. Upload the video to a folder on your Google Drive. 
3. In Google Slides, open the slide deck and find the slide where you’d like to add the video. 
4. Navigate to the Insert tab, select Video from the menu, and click on the Google Drive tab on the page that appears. 
5. Find your file on Google Drive and click “Insert”. 

How do I insert a video on Google Slides without YouTube? 

1. Save the file in a folder on your Google Drive. 
2. In the Google Slides presentation, select the slide where you want to insert the video. 
3. Navigate to  Insert > Video > Google Drive, then find the video there.
4. Click insert once you’ve selected the video file, and it will appear in your Google Slides deck. 

How do you put a video from your camera roll into Google Slides? 

1. Open the Google Drive app on your mobile device (the procedure works the same way on Android and iOS). 
2. Tap the plus sign at the bottom-right corner of the screen. 
3. Tap “Upload a file.” 
4. Find the video file on your device and upload it. 
5. On your computer, go to Insert > Video > Google Drive, then insert the video file (the mobile Google Slides app won’t let you insert videos).