5 Easy and Free Ways to Make a Slideshow on Mac (2024)

Use LightMV

LightMV is an online tool generally used during making awesome slideshows by just importing photos and typing texts. It has many kinds of well-designed themes along with perfect background music to be integrated into your slideshow.

What is a big advantage is that no skills are needed for using this tool, as you just need to finish these simple steps listed below to make a slideshow.

1. Open you browser and visit LightMV or click the button below to download the LightMV on your Mac.

   Download

2. Preview the themes provided on this site by clicking the “Play” icon displayed at the center of the video thumbnail. Afterwards, select the one you like by clicking “Select” button shown at the bottom of the theme.

   

3. At this point, click the “Upload Photos” button to import the photos that are planned to be used to make the slideshow.
4. When photos are finished being uploaded, click “YOUR TITLE HERE” in order to input the texts for opening and end.

   

5. Click “Produce” button. If you don’t have time to stay in front of your computer, you may enter your email and click “OK”. After that, you can close the window. The video link will be afterwards sent to your email inbox automatically when it finishes processing the video.

   

Use Option Spacebar in Finder

It is luckily very easy to create a slideshow on Mac via using the Option Spacebar.

1. Firstly, open the “Finder” in the dock on your Mac and select the images of your preference.
2. Press both “Option and Spacebar” keys on your keyboard. Afterwards, you can see that the selected images are displayed as a slideshow in full screen mode.

   

3. If you need to preview the previous slide, just click the left pointing arrow. To go to the next slide, you can just press the right pointing arrow. To stop playing the slides, click the two vertical bars icon. Click the four squares icon then you can see all the slides are shown in thumbnails mode on a single page.

   

Use Preview in Finder

The Preview tool included on Mac computers also has slideshow capability which can easily be launched from Finder.

Refer to this guide to learn how to make a slideshow on Mac:

1. Open “Finder” and choose the images you need to use for making a slideshow.
2. Right click on the selected images and afterwards choose “Open” from the menu for the tool to process your images.

   

3. Once Preview opens all of your selected images, click “View” > “Slideshow” to launch the slideshow.
4. The first double pointing arrow that can be pressed lets you go to the first slide and the double pointing right arrow on the other side will take you to the last slide of the slideshow. Click the two vertical bars if you need to pause the playback. To close the slideshow, you may click the cross icon.

   

Use Apple Photos

Apple Photos tool can also help you create a slideshow with music on Mac. Compared to the Option Spacebar and Preview methods, it provides you with more controls over theme, music, timing, transition and more.

The steps to make a slideshow with Photos are the follows:

1. Import the images to Photos program and select them for your slideshow.
2. Select “Create Slideshow” from “File” menu. A prompt with default name for the slideshow will pop up. If you need, you can customize the name of slideshow.

   

3. Click “Upload Photos” button to import the photos used to make the slideshow.
4. All of your slideshows that are created will be displayed in the left pane under the Projects tab. Therefore, just click “Projects” and double click the slideshow thumbnail to open it.
5. Click the “Play” icon to play the slideshow. You may adjust the volume of background music by clicking “sound” icon in the floating control. Click the “Themes” button to set the theme. Afterwards, press the “Music” button and select a song that you prefer from the list presented in the library to set it as background sound for slideshow. Click “Duration” button to set for how long each slide shall be played.

   

Use iMovie

iMovie is a very popular video editing program which comes along with all Mac computers. It also offers you the chance to create a polished slideshow in minutes.

The simple tutorial to make a slideshow with iMovie is the one you find below:

1. Open iMovie and select to create a new movie by clicking “File” > “New Movie”. Choose the theme that can suit your project best from the various themes options.
2. Click “Import Media” and open the photos folder. Here just easily press the “Command key” on keyboard and click to select each of the images that you want to add, click “Import All”. Highlight all the images, and drag them to the timeline.

   

3. In order to change the transitions between slides, double click on them afterwards select to edit the transitions. Double click the opening and closing screens to edit the texts.
4. Finally, to import a new song as background music, go to the “Import” tab and select the track and click “Import”. Click the “Play” button to play the slideshow. You can view it in full mode by clicking the “Full Screen” icon. You may save the project after editing.

   

Related posts:

• Top 5 Best Windows Movie Maker alternatives
• Top 5 Slideshow Software for Mac

Posted by: Norlyn Opinaldo on May 22, 2018 to Video Maker. Last updated on March 31, 2020