Google Slides does not have a letter-by-letter animation. Its text animations can bring in a whole text box, or one paragraph at a time, but never one character at a time. There are two ways to get a typing effect anyway.
Workaround 1: build it word by word
You can fake typing by splitting the line into several text boxes, one per word or phrase, and animating each with Appear set to After previous:
- Open Insert → Animation to show the Motion panel.
- Select the first text box, choose Appear, and set it to On click or After previous.
- Repeat for each following box, all set to After previous, with a short duration.
It works for a short headline, but lining up separate boxes is fiddly, it moves a word at a time rather than a letter, and any edit to the sentence means rebuilding it.
Workaround 2: insert a typing GIF
Google Slides plays animated GIFs inside presentations, both in the editor and in present mode. A GIF gives you the real effect, letter by letter, with a cursor and even rotating phrases:
- Make the animation with the typing text GIF maker. Choose the Slide · 1280×720 size, or Fit to text for a smaller element.
- Set the background to your slide colour, or choose Transparent and set the page colour to match.
- Download the GIF and add it with Insert → Image → Upload from computer.
Two things to know: GIFs in Google Slides start playing as soon as the slide is shown, not on click, and they keep looping unless you turned off Loop forever before downloading. For a line that types once and stays, turn looping off.
Which to use
Use the word-by-word method when the text needs to be editable by others in the deck. Use a GIF when it needs to look like real typing, when you want a cursor or rotating words, or when the same slide will also be used in PowerPoint, where the built-in by-letter option exists but does not carry over.