What’s new

October 28, 2026

BuddySlides is free, for good

The beta is over early, and nothing is going behind a paywall. Converting, previewing and downloading your decks stay free, along with every look, your brand color, every language and the language update. No account, no key, nothing to buy. Thank you to everyone who tried it and sent problem reports: keep them coming.

October 26, 2026

Editorial now looks like a magazine on every slide

The Editorial look used to share most of its slides with Clean. Now it designs them itself, like pages in a printed magazine: a small running head over a black rule, Georgia headlines, italic lead-ins, serif numbers on lists and steps, tabs and accordions set as columns instead of boxes, notes between two rules, quiz answers as a lettered list, and tables with rules only. Clean keeps its tidy cards and boxes, so the two now feel genuinely different.

The beta’s end date, easier to spot

The plans section now highlights that everything is free through November 30.

October 26, 2026

The converter on its own page

Converting lots of courses? buddyslides.io/convert is the same converter without the video and the rest of the home page: just the drop box and its help. Bookmark it to go straight there. The finished screen and the footer link to it too.

The daily counts now also note which of the two pages a conversion came from, still with nothing about you or your course in them.

All four looks on the home page

The looks section now shows Clean next to Editorial, Bold and Poster, each with the kind of slide it does best. The examples and the Rise-to-slide demo use a drawn picture instead of a stock photo. The guide to leaving Articulate 360 has moved to a link at the bottom of the page.

A clearer message for a damaged file

If a course file is damaged or only partly downloaded, BuddySlides now says so and asks you to download the export from Rise again, instead of suggesting a reload that wouldn’t help.

October 26, 2026

A simple count, so we know it’s being used

BuddySlides now counts how many conversions finish, how many decks are downloaded and how many conversions fail, as plain daily totals. Each count is a single word with nothing about you or your course in it. Your course still never leaves your computer. The privacy page has the details.

A simpler home page

The home page is shorter and easier to follow. The drop box has the top of the page to itself, and right below it a short “How it works” section shows the 10-second video next to the three steps. After that, in order: a lesson next to the slide it becomes, the looks, how picture fixes carry into every language, the plans, and answers to common questions. A button at the end takes you back up to the drop box, and leaving Articulate 360 has its own guide, linked from the drop box.

October 25, 2026

A 10-second look at how it works

The home page now has a short video just below the drop box: a Rise course goes into BuddySlides and comes out as an editable PowerPoint. It plays silently while it’s on screen, and you can pause it any time.

October 24, 2026

See your slides before you download

When a course is converted, the finished screen now shows every slide. Flip through with the arrows or your keyboard, or jump to any slide from the strip underneath. The preview is drawn right here in your browser, so your course still never leaves your computer.

Easier-to-read contents slides in the Bold look

Courses with many lessons used to get a crowded contents slide with numbers that were hard to see. Bold now lays out up to 20 lessons in two columns, with every lesson name the same size and numbers that stand out against the dark background.

Real alt text on pictures

Pictures in your deck used to carry a code BuddySlides uses internally as their alt text, and screen readers read it out loud. Now each picture gets the alt text you wrote in Rise. Pictures without any are left blank, so PowerPoint’s accessibility checker shows you which ones still need a description. Language updates work the same, including on decks you made before.

Decks now open properly in Articulate Storyline

Storyline 360 can import a PowerPoint file, but it brought in BuddySlides decks as blank slides, and it left out course audio. Both are fixed: your text, pictures, tables, videos, audio and speaker notes now come into Storyline as objects you can edit. Quizzes come in as plain slides, so you’d rebuild those as Storyline questions.

Slides have real titles

Each slide’s headline is now its slide title, so screen readers announce it, PowerPoint’s accessibility checker and outline see it, and Storyline names the slide after it instead of “Untitled Slide”. The slides look exactly the same as before.