You’ve probably watched recordings or videos of presentations, which are usually screen recordings with a mismatched aspect ratio, random popups from other applications, and other issues that are distracting. Google Slides is now rolling out the ability to record and save a presentation as a high quality video, all in the web browser.

Google announced the feature today in its Google Workspace Updates blog. The company said, “We’re introducing slides recordings, a new Google Slides feature that lets you easily record yourself presenting, and then share the presentation with others to view when it works for them. From webinars, to employee trainings, to lessons for your classroom, slides recordings help you effortlessly record visual and engaging presentations without ever leaving Slides.”

The recording functionality, accessible from the new “Record” button in the main toolbar, will open a new screen where you can start a recording of the presentation. You can change slides at your own pace and turn your microphone and camera on and off at any point. Google said in the blog post, “This feature helps you share more engaging video presentations with others for easy, flexible viewing. Whether sharing video content inside of your company or externally, with slides recordings you don’t need to use a separate video recording tool.”

The ability to export presentations as videos has been available in Microsoft PowerPoint, the main competitor to Slides, ever since PowerPoint 2010. Back then, you could only export your presentation in MP4 format at a maximum resolution of 1280×720. The result was just the presentation with automatically changing slides, rather than a recording of a person giving the presentation. Microsoft eventually added the ability to save narrations and laser pointer gestures for each slide, as well as exporting at resolutions of up to 4K. PowerPoint also has a special “PowerPoint Show” export format, which starts playing the presentation immediately when someone else opens it with PowerPoint.

Unfortunately, the new Google Slides feature is currently limited to business and education Google accounts, not personal accounts. That’s a shame, especially when PowerPoint’s equivalent feature is available to everyone with the desktop PowerPoint application installed. Here’s hoping the record feature eventually rolls out for everyone.

Source: Google Workspace Updates Blog