New in Storyline 360: Background Audio

Apr 04, 2023

Vanessa Fage
By Vanessa Fage

We’ve got news that we think will be music to your ears—you can now add background audio to your Storyline 360 courses! Thanks to this highly requested feature you can set the right tone for your training and keep learners engaged by adding a list of audio tracks that play in the background. And to give learners control over the experience and ensure it’s optimal for everyone, they can toggle background audio on and off as needed. Check out this article to learn more about this new feature: Storyline 360: Background Audio. 

If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can access this new feature immediately by updating Storyline 360 via the desktop app. And if you don’t have Articulate 360 but want to try out this feature, you can start a free 30-day trial.

Once you’ve given it a try we’d love to hear what you think! Please share any feedback or suggestions in the comments below. We’ll be working on enhancements for this feature and want to know if there are areas for improvement or additional functionality that you’d like to see. We’re looking forward to your feedback!

~The Storyline 360 Team

Pinned Reply
Lauren Connelly
6 months ago11/07/23 at 3:08 pm (UTC)

Hi everyone!

Good news! I'm happy to share that we just released Storyline 360 (Build 3.81.31200.0), which includes a feature to control the background audio for each slide using triggers to play, pause, or stop the playlist.

This was highly requested, so we hope it serves you in your course creation! If you run into any snags, don't hesitate to contact our team in a support case.

98 Replies
TKDG OES
1 year ago04/17/23 at 10:09 am (UTC)

Thanks for this new feature.

We have been waiting for it for so long. However, the background audio has one limitation: it has only ONE playlist for the whole course. It would be better if we could create multiple playlists and choose which playlist applies to different selected slides/scenes. That would be great!

These are some examples from iSpring that you can use as a reference.

Once again, thank you all for the new feature. We're really looking forward to new improvements in the future.

Robert Reynolds
1 year ago04/17/23 at 3:52 pm (UTC)
Vanessa Fage

Hello Robert,

Thanks for checking out the Background Audio feature, and it's great to hear how timely this was!

We currently don't tie the course play/pause button to the background audio, but would one of the following player keyboard shortcuts perhaps help in this situation for course reviewers?


  • Ctrl+Alt+A: Toggle background audio
  • Ctrl+Alt+M: Mute/unmute overall course audio

Vanessa - It might, yes, but ultimately, when sending the course up the ladder for multiple executives to review, the less instruction I have to impart about how to operate the course, the better. Being able to tell them just hit play and pause is much more direct.

Dusti Scoggins
12 months ago05/03/23 at 4:50 pm (UTC)

I need this too. I want looping audio throughout, don't have any narration, but there is no way to adjust the audio. It's so loud that I can't use it. Surely, there will be an option to adjust overall volume of overall background audio? I'm not using the player but buttons for manual user movement for slides. 

Developer 1
12 months ago05/09/23 at 5:21 am (UTC)

Like others I really need a way to manually control when the background audio is off/on or at least adjust it's volume myself. The auto reduction in volume is nice however i've got some MP4s that contain no audio and I'd like the background audio not to auto adjust when it encounters these silent videos. I've encoded these videos with no audio track... is the player simply adjusting because it detects a video file period? Any tips on how I can have a video not trigger this auto adjustment in volume? Thanks.

Laura Parenti
12 months ago05/09/23 at 12:34 pm (UTC)

Hi Dusti,

I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but I have been using another program to lower the volume level of the music file itself (I use Camtasia, but there are many other programs that can add an audio compression effect to media), so when I add the edited music file to my Storyline file, it's at a suitable volume level for use as course-wide background music. I suppose it will depend on personal preference and the volume the music file was originally at, but I use a 40–50% audio compression and then adjust the background music setting (to lower volume during narration) on Storyline to 85%. 

Steven Benassi
12 months ago05/11/23 at 3:00 pm (UTC)

Hi Karl!

It sounds like you were trying to customize the controls for background audio in your Storyline 360 imported Rise course. I'd be happy to share some insight!

At the moment, that type of functionality is not available in Rise 360. However, we currently have a Feature Request logged which would allow you to add custom triggers to control background audio in your Storyline 360 course. I've included your voice, and if that feature makes it on our feature roadmap we'll be sure to update this thread!

Once that feature becomes implemented, you would need to set up custom triggers within your Storyline 360 course first and then reimport it to your Rise 360 lesson.

Please let me know if you have any more questions!

Steven Benassi
11 months ago05/17/23 at 12:15 pm (UTC)

Hi Christine!

Sorry to hear you have also run into the issue where background audio is not playing in your published course!

Currently some course elements like background audio will not appear in a published video.

Not to worry! We already have this logged as a feature request so I will go ahead and add your voice! We’ll update this discussion if this feature makes it on our feature roadmap.

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