Top 11 Google Slides Animation Tips and Tricks to Use It Like a Pro

Presentations give you a space to get creative. The more creative you are, the better your presentations will be. One way to improve your presentations is to use animations and transitions. Interestingly, you can add animations in Google Slides as well. We’ve covered the basics of animations in a separate article. In this article, we’ll show you 11 tips and tricks to get the most out of Google Slides animations.

Animations help to grab and hold the user’s attention. This is useful, especially when you have a lot of information about text, images, and other objects on your slide. You can hide them using animations. This way, users will only see the information that you are currently talking about. The information that will be presented in advance remains hidden. It doesn’t lose your audience’s interest in your presentation.

Let’s check out various tips and tricks for Google Slides animations.

Note: You can only use animations on the web version of Google Slides. You cannot add animations from Android, iPhone, or iPad.

1. Add a transition effect to the slide

For starters, you can apply transition effects to your slides. Transitions will take effect each time you move from one slide to the next during a presentation. Google Slides supports transition effects like dissolve, slide, fade, flip, bounce, etc.

To add a transition effect, right-click on the slide in the left sidebar. Select Transition from the list.

You will see the Motion sidebar appear on the right side. In the Slide Transition section, choose a transition effect for the current slide. You can adjust the transition speed using the slider that appears.

Note: You can only add one transition effect per slide.

2. Add the same transition effect to all slides

Using the tip above, you can add transitions to other slides. You can use different transition effects for each slide. However, if you want your presentation to be consistent, you can apply the same transition to every slide.

For this, you don’t need to add the transition separately for each slide. Just add a transition effect to any slide. In the right sidebar of Motion that appears, you’ll see the Apply to All Slides button. Click on it after selecting a transition effect. Now the selected transition will apply to all slides in the current presentation.

3. Add animation to objects

You can animate images, text, shapes, and other objects in Google Slides. To add animation to any object, right-click on it and select Animate. Otherwise, select the object, click Insert> Animation.

The Motion sidebar opens to the right side. By default, animations are added with a fade effect. However, you can change it. Expand the animation section under Object animations. Choose the animation effect and how the animation should start (on click, after the previous one, with the previous one) from the available drop-down lists. You can also adjust the speed of the animation from the slider.

Point: Check out 15 tips for editing images in Google Slides.

4. Add multiple animations

Interestingly, you can add multiple animations to the same object. For example, you can add animation once, animate another object, and then animate the first object again. This way you don’t need to add the same object again. The result depends on your creativity and what you want to achieve.

To add more animations to the same object, select the object. Click Add Animation in the Motion panel that appears when you right-click the object and select Animation.

5. Reorganize the animations

When you’ve added multiple animations to the slide, you can rearrange them. Animations are organized in the Motion panel in the order they are played. To change their order, drag and drop them using the 8 point icon available next to the animation name.

6. Check the animations added to an object

When multiple animations are added to a slide, it can prevent you from knowing which ones are added to a particular object.

To view and identify the object’s animations, click the Show option in the top bar and select Movements or Animations. This will open the Motion panel.

There are now two ways to check animations. First, with the Motion panel open, click on the object. Google will highlight the animations of this object.

Alternatively, you will see the object icon before the animations. This will also help identify the animation.

7. Preview animations

To make sure the animations are correct, you can preview them without playing your entire Google slide. To do this, click the Play button under the Object Animations section in the Motion panel.

8. Animate lists or bullet points

If you want to display the list items one by one, you can use animations for the same. To do this, select the text box containing your list items. Right-click on the text box and select Animate.

Check the box next to By Paragraph below Text Box Animation. If you want all the items in the list to appear at the same time, clear the By paragraph check box.

You can use the same functionality to animate multiple paragraphs. One paragraph will appear at a time followed by the next.

Point: Find out how to hyperlink to text, images, or objects in Google Slides.

9. Use different animations for list items

Another creative way to animate lists is to add a different animation effect to your list items. For this you will need to add each item in the list as a new text box. Then add animation to each point individually.

10. Animate several elements

If you want multiple elements to have the same animation, you need to group them together. To do this, drag your mouse over the items you want to group. A blue selection box will appear around the selected images. With all the objects selected, right-click any one of them and select Animate. You will notice that all the selected objects will appear in the right panel.

11. Delete animations or transitions

To remove the transition effect from a slide, open the Animation panel. To do this, click View> Motions. Then select None in the Slide Transition section.

To remove animation from an object, select the object. Animations for that object will be highlighted in the Motion panel. Expand the added animation and click the Remove icon.

Bring presentations to life

You can use animations in several ways. For example, you can create animated timelines, create charts where each bar will appear one after the other, animated bulleted lists, and much more. However, we suggest you don’t go overboard with the animations. Sometimes less is more.