How to add Google Photos™ to Google Slides™ in bulk

A slideshow for a wedding, a memorial, a graduation or a school year usually starts as a few hundred photos in Google Photos™, and Google Slides™ has no button to import an album. There are three ways to get them onto slides.

1. Slides’ own panel (no setup, a few photos)

In the presentation, Insert > Image > Drive & Photos opens a panel on the right. Its Google Photos™ tab lists your photos by date. Clicking a photo puts it on the slide you are on, sized to fit the slide.

That is one photo per click, all on the current slide. For a photo per slide, add a slide (Ctrl+M) before each click. It works for ten photos, but it is slow for three hundred.

2. Download them, then a script (free, some setup)

In Google Photos™, open the album, then its menu (⋮) > Download all. You get a zip file.
Unzip it and upload the folder to Google Drive™.
In the presentation, go to Extensions > Apps Script and replace everything in Code.gs with the code below.
Put your folder’s ID in place of FOLDER_ID. The ID is the last part of the folder’s URL in Drive.

Click Run, and allow the access it asks for: it reads your Drive to find the folder.

function imagesToSlides() {
  var folder = DriveApp.getFolderById('FOLDER_ID');
  var deck = SlidesApp.getActivePresentation();
  var files = [];
  var it = folder.getFiles();
  while (it.hasNext()) {
 var f = it.next();
 if (/^image\/(png|jpeg|gif)$/.test(f.getMimeType())) files.push(f);
  }
  files.sort(function (a, b) { return a.getName().localeCompare(b.getName(), undefined, { numeric: true }); });
  var W = deck.getPageWidth(), H = deck.getPageHeight();
  files.forEach(function (f) {
 var img = deck.appendSlide(SlidesApp.PredefinedLayout.BLANK).insertImage(f.getBlob());
 var k = Math.min(W / img.getWidth(), H / img.getHeight());
 img.setWidth(img.getWidth() * k).setHeight(img.getHeight() * k);
 img.setLeft((W - img.getWidth()) / 2).setTop((H - img.getHeight()) / 2);
  });
}

It adds one slide per image at the end of the presentation, with each image scaled to fit and centered. The slides follow the file names, with numbers in numeric order, so IMG_9 comes before IMG_10. That is not always the order the photos were taken in.

Slides takes only PNG, JPEG and GIF images up to 50 MB and 25 megapixels:

The script skips iPhone HEIC photos, so convert them to JPEG first.
A larger image stops the script with an error, so shrink it first.

Apps Script also stops any run after 6 minutes. For a very large folder, split it into a few smaller ones.

3. PhotoFill (12 successful photos free for new users)

I built PhotoFill for this, so no download and no Drive copy are needed.

Watch: select photos and put each on a new slide (2 minutes).

In the presentation:

Go to Extensions > PhotoFill > Open PhotoFill.
Check the Google account shown in PhotoFill, then click Google Photos. Google’s own picker opens in a tab, where you select your photos and click Done.
Preview the photos and layout, reorder or remove images, choose a caption/background, then start the import. The full selection is checked against your free allowance before any slides are made.

PhotoFill supports up to 500 images in one import job. Google lets add-ons take only the photos you select, not a whole album in one click. In an album, click the first photo’s check mark, then Shift-click the last one to select everything in between.

The options are:

Layout: one photo a slide (the whole photo, or filling the slide with the edges cropped), or two or four a slide.
Order: as picked, by the date supplied by Google Photos™ (oldest first), or by file name.
Caption: that date when available, the file name, or none.
Background: your theme’s, black or white.

New slides go after the one you are on, so you can start with a title slide. Each photo goes in at its own size, up to 4K, which is 3840 pixels on its long side and the most Google Slides™ keeps. Tick “Lighter file” for photos at most 2560 pixels across when the presentation has to stay small.

Imports run in rounds with progress and pause controls. You can reopen a recoverable job in the same presentation for seven days, keeping completed images. Failed or unsupported images are identified, not silently dropped. Local JPEG/PNG and private selected Drive images are also supported; see the source limits on the product page.

PhotoFill reaches only the photos/files you select and the presentation you open it in. New users get 12 successful photos free in total; existing users keep 30/day. A $4.99 seven-day pass does not renew. Pro is also available at $5.99/month or $29/year; Google service limits still apply.

Install PhotoFill from the Google Workspace™ Marketplace