A free PowerPoint alternative that runs in your browser
Most decks are ten slides of words and a few pictures, made in an hour and shown once. That does not need a subscription, an account, or a copy of the deck on somebody else's server. Here is a slide editor that runs in the tab, keeps the deck on your own machine, presents it full screen, and writes a PowerPoint file at the end, with a straight list of what it does not do.
Slides builds a deck in the browser tab: six layouts (a title, title and bullets, two columns, a big number, a quotation, a section break), five colour themes, pictures, speaker notes, and a full-screen show driven by the arrow keys. It opens a .pptx somebody sends you, and exports the deck as a PowerPoint file that opens and is editable in PowerPoint, Keynote and LibreOffice, as one HTML file that plays in any browser with nothing installed, or as a PDF. The deck is kept in this browser, or written into a folder on your disk. There is no account and nothing is uploaded. What it does not do is transitions, video, or two people editing at once, and it says so.
What people actually mean by "PowerPoint"
Almost nobody who looks for a free alternative wants the whole program. They want to put a title on a slide, some bullets under it, a picture on the next one, a big number on the one after, and stand in front of it. Then they want to send it to somebody who will open it in PowerPoint, which is the part that decides whether an alternative is one. Slides does that set, and the last part is the new part: the deck goes out as a .pptx with every slide's words, emphasis, lists, pictures and notes, editable there.
What is there
- Six layouts. A title slide, a title with bullets, two columns, a big number with a line under it, a quotation with its source, and a section break. Switch a slide's layout at any time and the words stay.
- Five themes. Light, dark, ochre, forest and slate, applied to the whole deck; the thumbnails follow.
- Words and pictures. Bold, italic, lists, a picture in the body of a slide. Speaker notes under each slide, shown to you and not to the room.
- Presenting. Full screen, arrow keys or a click to move, Escape to leave. Before presenting on somebody else's machine, export the deck: their browser does not have your local storage.
- Getting one in. Open takes a .pptx: each slide's words, lists, bold and italic, pictures and speaker notes come in as slides here, and the notice says how many slides and pictures arrived.
- Getting it out. Export PowerPoint writes a .pptx. Export HTML writes one file that plays in any browser. Print / PDF gives one slide a page. Save to computer writes the .pptx into your folder without a download prompt.
- Where it lives. In this browser on this device by default, which is private and is not a backup; or in the folder you have chosen for the site, as a file.
About the PowerPoint file
A .pptx is a zip of XML parts, and Slides writes it in the tab: one part per slide, the words as text boxes placed by the slide's layout, bullets as bullets and numbered lists as numbers, bold and italic as run properties, each picture as a file in the zip with a picture shape pointing at it, notes as notes pages, and the deck's colours as each slide's background and text. What it is not is a copy of the layout on screen. PowerPoint lays text out its own way, so a slide that fits here can run long there, and the six layouts are boxes at the right places rather than PowerPoint's own placeholders. Everything on the slide is there and editable, which is what an export is for; the last inch of layout is theirs to redo.
What is not there
This is the part a comparison page usually leaves out.
- PowerPoint's own layouts, charts, tables and SmartArt in a .pptx that arrives. The words, lists, pictures and notes come in; those do not, and a deck that leans on them is better read as a PDF in READER.
- Transitions and animations. Slides cut. Nothing flies in.
- Video and sound on a slide.
- Templates beyond the six layouts, a slide master, or custom fonts.
- Working together. One person, on their own machine. Send the file.
- Charts on a slide. Sheets draws one from a block of cells and saves it as a picture, which goes on a slide like any picture.
| The job | Here | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ten slides of words and pictures, shown once | Yes | The whole point |
| Hand the deck to somebody with PowerPoint | Yes | Export PowerPoint; they may tidy the layout |
| Play it on a machine with nothing installed | Yes | Export HTML, open in any browser |
| Print it, or send a PDF | Yes | Print / PDF, one slide a page |
| Open a .pptx somebody sent | Yes | Words, lists, pictures and notes; not charts or transitions |
| Animations, transitions, embedded video | No | |
| Two people editing at once | No | No server, so no shared session |
| Keep the deck if the site disappears | Yes | Export it, or keep it in your folder |
Why in a browser, and what that costs
The free slide tools online keep the deck on their computer, which is how they can show it on any device and also how they can read it, keep it, and change the terms. Here the deck is on yours, and the cost is that it is only on yours: nothing syncs, and a deck to show on another machine has to travel as a file. For most decks that is a fair trade and a short one, since the file is one export away.
Questions people ask about A free PowerPoint alternative that runs in your browser