20 add-ons and extensions to supercharge your Google Slides presentations

G Suite

G Suite | Friday, September 27, 2019

20 add-ons and extensions to supercharge your Google Slides presentations

Google Slides is an extremely useful app in and out of the classroom. You can make it even more powerful with these 20 add-ons and extensions!

Google Slides is an incredibly versatile tool. On the Google Teacher Tribe podcast, Kasey Bell often refers to it as the “Swiss Army Knife” of the G Suite tools because of how much you can do with it.

But what if we could supercharge this already powerful tool?

We can! With add-ons (extra features within the app that enhance it) and extensions (mini-programs that modify and enhance Chrome) it’s possible!

During a past #Ditchbook Twitter chat (Thursdays at 7 p.m. PST / 8 p.m. MST / 9 p.m. CST / 10 p.m. EST), we asked educators to share their favorite add-ons and extensions for Google Slides. As usual, they shared some amazing ideas!

Some of these may be familiar and some may be brand new. Did you know that there is a Magic Rainbow Unicorn add-on for Google Slides? Or a way to make your phone work as your Google Slides remote?

Scroll down to find these ideas and more to supercharge your Google Slides presentations. Note: Each of the headings is a clickable link that will take you to a site with more information or directly to the Chrome web store or G Suite marketplace.

20 add-ons and extensions for Google Slides

Add-ons for Google Slides

1. PearDeck

Turn your Slides into formative assessments and add interactive questions to your presentations with the Pear Deck add-on.

Also check out 20 ways to use Pear Deck to engage students to learn more about how to use this awesome tool with your class.

2. Noun Project

Add icons directly to your presentations without ever leaving Google Slides!

Visit 10 ways icons from The Noun Project can impact learning for more ideas.

3. Magic Rainbow Unicorn

Have you ever wanted a way to add the rainbow colors to all of your text without needing to individually change each letter? Well look no futher! The Magic Rainbow Unicorn add-on does it for you!

4. Insert Icons for Slides

Over 1,800 icons available to add directly into your Google Slides presentation.

5. Slide Randomizer

If you use Google Slides as flashcards or just want to switch things up in a presentation you can use slides randomizer to automatically shuffle your slide deck.

6. Animated GIFs

Animated GIFs make our presentations fun and engaging. Since the original publishing of this post the GIF add-on mentioned here has been removed. However adding GIFs to your presentation is easy to do. Kasey Bell of Shake Up Learning has a great post on how to do it "How to Insert Super Cool GIFs in Google Docs and Slides" or try talltweets.com to turn your Google Slides into animated GIFs.

7. Icons from Flaticon

Flaticon's add-on gives you free access to TONS of icons for your presentations (or docs or forms or sheets!).

8. Nearpod

Deliver the magic of Nearpod to any Google Slides presentation. With Nearpod, students have the ability to participate in lessons that contain virtual reality, 3D objects, and so much more.

9. Unsplash

With this add-on you can add the entire Unsplash library of curated high-resolution photos directly in Google Slides for your presentations.

Extensions for Google Slides

10. Clipboard History Pro

If you find yourself copying and pasting information a lot then Clipboard History Pro is a great extension to add. Manage your clipboard history, access favorite clips and even send clipboard items to your smartphone.

11. EquatIO

Use this extenstion to easily create mathematical equations or formulas quickly and easily.

12. Fireshot

Look over student work, grab screenshots of samples to discuss, stick them on slides. Use Fireshot as a quick and easy way to share feedback with the class.

13. Color Pick Eye Dropper

Sometimes we want to use the EXACT color we found on a website or in a picture online. Use the Color Pick Eye Dropper to find the color values you want to replicate.

14. Bitmoji

Bitmojis are so fun! They’re these little cartoon character images of yourself that let you express emotions and communicate. Use the Bitmoji Chrome extension to add these stickers to your slides for some added engagement.

15. Pear Deck Power-Up 

The Pear Deck Power-Up extension makes sure that videos, animations, and GIFs embedded in your Pear Deck slides play at full resolution.

16. Sir Links-A-Lot

If you like to change your Google Slides URLs to make it easy to share a forced copy, template, preview or PDF then the Sir Links-A-Lot extension will save you TONS of time!

17. Screencastify

Screencasting and sharing has never been easier and now all of the Pro features of the Screencastify chrome extension are completely FREE!

18. Remote for Slides

Get the ability to control Google Slides on any device, remotely. That's it. No fancy hardware. No extra remote to remember. It's as easy as adding this Chrome extension.

19. Tab Carousel

After students have completed an assignment in Google Sides you can open up each presentation in a separate tab and use Tab Carousel to automatically cycle through each tab to showcase student work.

20. Poll Everywhere

Poll your class or audience anytime. Choose from a variety of activity types, insert them into your decks, and watch results as they come in on the screen — all within Google Slides.

What are your favorite add-ons and extensions for Google Slides? Tell us in the comments below!


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  • Jonny TechLover says:

    Thanks for the article, very interesting indeed! In my opinion though, I like add-ons that offer me an all-in-one solution rather than very specific tasks. Just to share, I have found a new add-on that does that very well: SlidesPro – might be worth checking 🙂

    Adding link below in case anyone is interested:
    https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/slidespro/390861213836

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