Google Slides is a

presentation program A computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: * an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted * a ...

included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. The service also includes:

Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Go ...

Google Sheets Google Sheets is a spreadsheet program included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes: Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. G ...

Google Drawings Google Drawings is a diagramming software included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Sites, and Google Keep. Go ...

Google Forms Google Forms is a survey administration software included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Sites, and ...

Google Sites Google Sites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google For ...

and

Google Keep Google Keep is a note-taking service included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes: Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms and Google Sites. G ...

. Google Slides is available as a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

for: Android, iOS,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

BlackBerry OS BlackBerry OS is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system developed by Canadian company BlackBerry Limited for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking and supports specialized i ...

and as a desktop application on Google's

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...

. The app is compatible with

Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired Power ...

file formats. The app allows users to create and edit files online while collaborating with other users in real-time. Edits are tracked by a user with a revision history presenting changes. An editor's position is highlighted with an editor-specific color and cursor and a permissions system regulates what users can do. Updates have introduced features using

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, including "Explore", offering and "tasks to other users.

History

In September 2007, Google released a

for the Google Docs suite, which originated from the company's acquisition of Tonic Systems on April 17, 2007. In March 2010, Google acquired DocVerse, an online document collaboration company that allowed online collaboration between multiple users on

and other

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

-compatible document formats such as

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

and

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...

. Improvements based on DocVerse were announced and deployed in April 2010. In June 2012, Google acquired Quickoffice, a freeware proprietary productivity suite for mobile devices. In October 2012, Google Presentations was renamed Google Slides and a

Google Chrome app A Google Chrome App, or commonly just Chrome App, was a certain type of (non-standardized) web application that ran on the Google Chrome web browser. Chrome apps can be obtained from the Chrome Web Store where apps, extensions, and themes can be ...

was released, which provided shortcuts to Slides on Chrome's new tab page.

Platforms

Google Slides is available as a

supported on the

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...

, and

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an impor ...

web browsers. Users can access presentations, as well as other files, through the

Google Drive Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google's servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files. In add ...

website. In June 2014, Google rolled out a dedicated website homepage for Slides that contained only files created using the Drive suite. In 2014, Google launched a dedicated mobile app for Slides for the Android and iOS mobile operating systems. In 2015, the mobile website for Slides was updated with a "simpler, more uniform" interface and while users can read files through the mobile websites, users trying to edit presentations will be redirected towards the dedicated mobile app for Slides, thus preventing editing on the mobile web.

Features

Editing

Collaboration and revision history

Google Slides serves as a

collaborative Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Mos ...

tool for cooperative editing of presentations in real time. Presentations can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously and users can see slide-by-slide and character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. Changes are automatically saved to Google's servers and a revision history is automatically kept and users have the option of reverting to previous versions. An editor's current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor, so if another editor happens to be viewing the same slide, they can see edits as they occur. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Only adjacent revisions can be compared and users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved. Files can be exported to a user's local computer in a variety of formats, including

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

.jpg JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

, and

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

Explore

Launched in September 2016, "Explore" provides additional functionality to the

suite through

. In Google Slides, Explore dynamically generates design suggestions based on the contents of each slide. The "Explore" features in the Drive suite follow the launch of a more basic research tool originally introduced in 2012.

Action items

In October 2016, Google announced the addition of "action items" to Slides. If a user writes the name of a person the presentation is shared within a comment, the service will intelligently assign that action to the person. Google states this will make it easier for other collaborators to see who is responsible for individual tasks. When a user visits Google Sheets or any of the other Google Drive applications, any files with tasks assigned to them will be highlighted with a badge.

Offline editing

To view and edit presentations offline, users need to be using the Google Chrome web browser. A Chrome extension, ''Google Docs Offline'', allows users to enable offline support for Slides files on the Google Drive website. The Android and iOS apps natively support offline editing.

Files

Supported file formats and limits

Google Slides presentation files converted to .gslides Slides format cannot be larger than 100 MB. Images inserted cannot be larger than 50 MB and must be in either .jpg, .png, or .gif formats.

Google Workspace

Google Slides is free to use for individuals, but it is also available as part of the business-centered

Google Workspace Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and later G Suite) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet ...

(formerly G Suite) service by Google, which is a monthly subscription that enables additional business-focused functionality.

Other features

A simple find and replace tool is available and like all Google Drive suite programs, Slides includes a web clipboard tool that allows users to copy and paste content between Slides and the other Drive apps. The web clipboard can also be used for copying and pasting content between different computers. Copied items are stored on Google's servers for up to 30 days. For most copying and pasting, Google Slides also supports keyboard shortcuts, but sometimes due to them supporting this they will only let you use keyboard shortcuts. Google offers an extension for the Google Chrome web browser called ''Office editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides'' that enables users to view and edit PowerPoint documents and other Microsoft Office documents on Google Chrome, via the Google Drive suite apps. The extension can be used for opening Office files stored on the computer using Chrome, as well as for opening Office files encountered on the web (in the form of email attachments, web search results, etc.) without having to download them. The extension is installed on ChromeOS by default.

Discontinued features

Google Cloud Connect Google Cloud Connect was a free cloud computing plug-in for Windows Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 that can automatically store and synchronize any Microsoft Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or Excel spreadsheet to Google Docs in G ...

was a plug-in for

2003, 2007, and 2010 that could automatically store and synchronize any PowerPoint presentation to Google Docs (before the introduction of Drive) in the Google Slides or PowerPoint formats. The online copy was automatically updated each time the PowerPoint document was saved. PowerPoint documents could be edited offline and synchronized later when online. Google Cloud Connect maintained previous document versions and allowed multiple users to collaborate by working on the same document at the same time. Google Cloud Connect has been discontinued as of April 30, 2013, as, according to Google, Google Drive achieves all of the above tasks, "with better results".

References

External links

* {{Google LLC Slides Google Docs Editors