How to make an animated presentation in your browser

9 October 2026

An animated presentation is a deck of animated slides: text, charts and slide changes move instead of simply appearing. In OpenSlides you get one by pasting your notes. Every slide it builds already has entrance effects and a transition, and you can change each of them afterwards. It runs in a browser tab, and you do not need an account or an AI key.

The short answer

Open the OpenSlides studio, choose New deck, paste your notes, pick one of four looks and click Build the deck. Press Present to watch it move. To change the motion, click an element, open the Animate tab and pick another effect.

What you need

A desktop browser. We tested these steps in a Chromium-based browser on Windows.
Notes with headings and bullets. Each heading becomes a slide. How OpenSlides reads your notes explains the rules.

These are the notes used in this guide:

# Corner Cafe: spring update

## What changed
- New oven installed in March
- Opening an hour earlier on weekdays
- Card payments only at the counter

## Cups sold per day
- Monday: 140
- Wednesday: 165
- Friday: 210
- Saturday: 260

## Next steps
- Hire a weekend barista
- Print the new menu

Step 1: Build the deck

Open the studio. On the start screen, choose New deck.
Under "What are you making?", choose Start from your notes, no structure.
Fill in What is it for?. The Plan it button stays grey until this field has text in it.
Paste your notes into Your notes or document, or use Load a .md or .txt file.
Check Length. It starts at 8 slides and rises by itself when your notes have more headings, up to 20. If you set it lower than your notes need, the plan lists the sections that did not fit and offers Add them back.
Click Plan it. You get one card per slide. The sample gives four: a title, a list of points, a chart and a closing slide. The bullets written as "Monday: 140" became a bar chart.
Click Choose a look. The studio draws your outline four ways, and the small play button on each look replays its motion. Select one and click Build the deck.

A message confirms the result: "Built 4 slides — one step to undo."

Keep headings short, and read slide 1 before you present. Double-click any text to fix it.

Step 2: Watch it move

The editor shows each slide in its finished state. To see the motion, press Present at the top right. The right arrow key, the space bar or a click moves forward, the left arrow goes back, and Esc returns to the editor.

In the sample, the title arrives line by line, the three points rise one after another, the bars of the chart grow from the baseline, and each slide fades into the next.

Step 3: Change an element's effect

Click an element on the slide, for example a heading.
Open the Animate tab on the right. The panel is headed "EFFECTS" followed by the element's name, for example "EFFECTS · TITLE", and shows the effect the element has now.
Choose another effect from the first list. There are 33, including fade, rise, drop, pop, blur-in, wipe-right, typewriter, words, letters-slam, count-up, grow, pulse and glow.
Click Preview to play it on the slide.
Delay and Dur set, in milliseconds, when the effect starts and how long it runs.
Add an effect… puts a second effect on the same element. The × next to an effect removes it.

Each point on a slide built from notes is its own element, so each can have its own effect and timing.

Step 4: Make something wait for you

The second list in the same panel decides when an effect plays: On enter, On click, With previous or After previous. On enter is the usual setting on a slide built from notes. The effect plays as soon as the slide appears.

Set an element to On click and it stays hidden when the slide opens. Press the right arrow key and it plays. Press again and the deck moves to the next slide. This is useful for a heading or an answer you want to hold back.

Step 5: Change how slides change

Click the empty area beside the slide so that nothing is selected, and stay on the Animate tab.

TRANSITION IN sets how the current slide arrives. Kind offers Cut, Fade, Push, Slide-over, Zoom, Flip and Morph (matching ids), and the field beside it is the duration in milliseconds. The slide's thumbnail shows the kind you chose.
BUILD ORDER lists every effect on the slide in the order it plays. Clear all removes them. Undo brings them back one at a time.
Personality, under MOTION, sets the pace of the whole deck: None (preset timing), Premium, Corporate, Playful, Energetic or Calm. Calm is slower and Energetic is quicker.

Step 6: Present it, record it or put it online

Present from the studio. The button beside Present opens a presenter view in a second window, with your notes, the next slide and a timer.

Record a video. Choose File → Record video…. The deck opens in a new tab. Click Start recording, and when the browser asks what to share, choose that tab. The deck plays through in real time and the video is saved to your downloads: an MP4 where the browser can record MP4 (Chrome, Safari), a WebM otherwise (Firefox). On-click effects play by themselves in the recording. The video is a recording of the tab, so make the window large before you start.

Put it online. Click Share, then Export site (.zip). You get a folder of plain files. Upload it to any web host and open the link. The slides move as they do in the studio, with Previous and Next buttons and a full-screen button. The folder has to be hosted: opening its index.html straight from your disk shows a blank page.

Keep a copy. The studio saves the deck in your browser as you work, and it keeps one deck at a time. Before you open or import another file, choose File → Save as .openslides.zip.

Limits

Export PDF and Export PowerPoint give static slides. The PDF is one picture per slide. The PowerPoint file keeps fade and push transitions between slides, but the effects on text and charts do not play there.
The studio needs a connection to load. Open it while you are online.
Recording happens in real time, so a 40-second deck takes 40 seconds to record.

Your notes stay in the browser

The deck is stored in your browser's own storage. Building from notes, editing, presenting and exporting do not upload your notes or your slides.

FAQ

Do I need an AI key to make animated slides?

No. Everything in this guide was done without one. The outline comes from the headings and bullets in your notes.

Does it cost anything, or need an account?

No. Nothing in this guide asks you to sign in or pay.

Can I animate a chart?

Yes. Write the bullets under a heading as "Label: number" and the slide is built as a bar chart whose bars grow. Bullets that start with a figure become numbers that count up.

Can I make an element appear only when I click?

Yes. Select it, open Animate, and change On enter to On click.

Can I turn the deck into a video?

Yes. File → Record video… records the deck as it plays and saves an MP4 (a WebM in browsers that cannot record MP4, such as Firefox).

Will the animation survive in PowerPoint?

No. The PowerPoint export is static. To show the motion, present from the browser, record a video or host the exported site.

Open the studio and build your first animated deck

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