If you are presenting in person, the quickest way to display Google Slides on a TV is to cast it. Open the deck in the Google Slides app on a phone that is on the same Wi-Fi as a Chromecast, tap Cast, and swipe through. A laptop on an HDMI cable does the same job with no Wi-Fi involved at all.
A deck that should loop on a TV all day is a different problem. Think of a reception, a staff room or a shop counter, with nobody standing next to the screen. Something on the TV has to play the deck by itself, and there are two ways to get that. One is Google's own "Publish to the web" link, opened in a browser on the TV. The other is a digital signage app that reads the deck straight from your Drive. Publishing costs nothing but makes the deck public. The signage app keeps it private, keeps playing when the Wi-Fi drops and comes back by itself after a power cut. Below, the four options side by side, then the signage route step by step, including exactly what it cannot do.
Four ways to put Google Slides on a TV
Option | Good for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
Cast from a phone or laptop | A meeting, a one-off talk | The phone has to stay nearby and awake |
Laptop on HDMI | An event, a training day | Ties up a computer; someone restarts it after every hiccup |
Publish to the web | A free loop on a screen you already have | Anyone with the link can see the deck |
A digital signage app | A deck that runs all day, every day | A monthly cost per screen; slides play as still images |
Casting from the Google Slides app
Google's steps for Android are short: put the phone on the same Wi-Fi network as the Chromecast, open the presentation in the Google Slides app, tap Cast and swipe to change slides (Google's help page). Google also says full-screen presentations work on a TV with AirPlay. From a laptop, Chrome's Cast option sends the presentation tab to the same Chromecast.
Two things catch people out. Presenting does not work in Chromecast guest mode, so the phone really has to be on the Chromecast's own network. And the phone is the remote: lock it, take a call or walk out of range and the show is over. That is exactly right for a meeting and exactly wrong for a screen in reception.
A laptop on an HDMI cable
Plug in, press Present, and set the slideshow to auto-advance and loop from the presenter options. For a day, it is reliable. As a permanent install, though, it is a laptop on a shelf. It wants to sleep, it shows notifications on the TV, and it restarts for updates when it suits it. After a power cut, someone has to log in and press Present again.
Publish to the web, opened on the TV
In Google Slides, choose File > Share > Publish to web and pick how quickly the slides advance. Tick the options to start the slideshow as soon as the player loads and to restart it after the last slide, then publish. You get a link that plays the deck as a looping slideshow in a browser, so open it on the TV's own browser, a streaming stick or a small computer behind the screen.
Google's help page says changes to the original are carried into the published version, and that in Slides you cannot switch those automatic updates off (Make Google Docs, Sheets, Slides & Forms public). So your edits do reach the TV. The costs are elsewhere:
- Depending on your account settings, a published deck is visible to everyone on the web or to everyone in your organisation. Google itself warns you to be careful publishing private or sensitive information. A slide with next week's rota or a client's name does not belong there.
- On a work or school account, an administrator may have switched publishing off entirely.
- It is a live web page in a browser. A TV's built-in browser will not reopen it after a power cut, and nothing keeps it full-screen if someone presses the wrong button on the remote.
A digital signage app
The fourth option is a player on the TV that fetches the slides, loops them and keeps them in step with the deck. SignageStack's Google Slides app works this way. You sign in to Google once and pick the deck, and it stays private in your Drive. The slides are copied to the screen as images, so they keep playing when the network drops. On an Android box, the player starts again by itself after a power cut. The deck can sit in a playlist between other content, and one deck can play on as many screens as you like.
In return you pay a subscription per screen (for SignageStack, €11 a month or €100 a year, excluding VAT) and accept the limits described further down: still images, no animations.
How to display Google Slides on a TV with SignageStack
What you need
- A Google account that can open the presentation.
- The TV, plus something to run the player. The usual choice is an Android TV box with Android 8 or newer and 2 GB of RAM or more, and a TV that runs Android TV or Google TV can install the player itself. To try it first, the web player runs in any current browser on a laptop plugged into the TV.
- The screen paired with your account. The player shows a six-character code, and you type it into the dashboard under Add screen.
If the TV runs Samsung's Tizen or LG's webOS, there is no SignageStack app for it, so put a small Android box on an HDMI input. Our guide to running signage on a smart TV explains which TVs manage on their own. Fire TV sticks are not a qualified platform.
Step by step
- Add the app. In the dashboard, open Apps and add Google Slides.
- Connect Google. Under Google account, sign in once. SignageStack asks for access only to the files you pick, not to your whole Drive.
- Pick the deck. Google's own file picker opens. Choose the presentation: that one file is all SignageStack is allowed to read. It does not need to be shared or published.
- Decide how many slides. Leave Slides to show at 0 to play the whole deck, or enter a number to stop after that many.
- Put it on the screen. Add the app to a playlist, check its duration and publish it to the screen.
How long each slide stays up
There is no per-slide timing. Instead, the app's duration in the playlist is shared equally between the slides. When you add a deck, the duration follows the deck at about eight seconds a slide, so the whole thing plays once per turn. If you type your own duration, it is divided the same way: a 12-slide deck given two minutes shows each slide for ten seconds.
Two details matter here. First, no slide gets less than three seconds, so if the duration is too short for the deck, the app shows as many slides as fit and moves on. Second, the deck starts again from the first slide every time it comes round in the playlist. Put together, a 40-slide deck squeezed into a 30-second slot only ever shows its first ten slides. If the later ones matter, give the deck a longer duration or split it into two decks.
What happens when you edit the deck
On your side, nothing. Change a slide in Google Slides and the screen follows by itself, usually within a minute or two. The app checks the deck for a new version about once a minute and copies the slides again only when something has changed. There is no export, no re-upload and no USB stick.
What the Google Slides app does not do
Read this part before you build a deck for a screen.
- Slides play as still images. Transitions, animations, sound and videos embedded in the deck do not play, so a slide that reveals bullet points one by one shows up finished. If a video matters, upload it and put it in the playlist as its own item, straight after the deck. If the design depends on motion, the Canva app plays Canva presentations and animated designs as video, although it needs the internet to play.
- Each slide arrives as an image 1,600 pixels wide. That is the largest size Google's Slides API exports (API reference). A Full HD TV scales it up slightly: headings and photos look fine, while tiny footnotes look soft.
- It plays up to 100 slides. Longer decks are cut at 100.
- Slides to show counts from the start. To show only part of a deck, such as slides from the middle, mark the others Skip slide in Google Slides: the app leaves skipped slides out, as presenting does. If you still want to present the whole deck yourself, keep a separate copy for the screen.
- The slide keeps its shape. Slides are shown whole, on black. A 16:9 deck fills a 16:9 TV, but a 4:3 deck gets bars at the sides, and a landscape deck on a portrait screen gets wide bands above and below. For a portrait screen, change the deck's page size in Google Slides (File > Page setup) before you design it.
If the deck is really a document, such as a price list, a handbook or a timetable exported as PDF, the PDF Reader app flips through its pages the same way and needs no network either.
Making slides that read from across a room
A deck built for a meeting rarely works on a wall. People walk past rather than sit down, and nobody is talking them through it. A few habits help:
- One idea per slide, with a headline that can be read in the time the slide is up.
- Big type. The rule of thumb on our hardware page is that the furthest reader should be at most six screen heights away for large text, and four for text read line by line. If the room is deeper than that, cut words rather than shrinking them.
- Strong contrast. Thin grey text over a photo disappears on a TV.
- A clear margin, because some TVs crop a sliver off the edges of the picture unless overscan is switched off.
Our guide to digital signage design goes further into type, pacing and layout.
Where to start
Start with the screen and the deck you already have. Plug a laptop into the TV, open the web player, pair it, and add the Google Slides app with the deck people keep asking about. Let it run for a day and edit a slide halfway through to watch it change. If the screen is worth keeping, move it to a small Android box (what to look for in one) so it survives power cuts without anyone touching it. The SignageStack trial runs for 21 days with every feature, on one screen, and needs no card. And if the next thing you want on the wall is a live table or a dashboard, see putting an office dashboard on a TV.
