Closing participation for specific slides can be useful if you need to explain a question before your audience votes, or for any other reason where you do not wish the participants to respond to a question at that moment.
If you want to close responses completely for all slides, you can disable participation instead.
How to disable participation
You can close and open participation for a specific slide from both the Edit View and the Presentation View.
Disable participation from the Edit View:
Select the slide you want to disable participation for
In the Interactivity tab, toggle Enable voting
Disabling participation from the Presentation View:
Go to the slide you want to disable participation for
Open the Presentation Menu in the lower left corner
Click on Turn off responses or use the shortcut 'C' on your keyboard
Note: It is not possible to disable participation for Quiz slides or Q&A slides.
How to enable participation
To let your audience respond again, simply go back into the Presentation Menu and click Turn on responses, or use the shortcut 'C' on your keyboard to toggle between enabling and disabling responses while presenting in fullscreen.
From the Edit View you can open participation again by toggling Allow responses in the Interactivity tab.
Start a Countdown
You can also set a timer to start a countdown that closes participation:
Go to the slide you want to disable participation for
Open the Presentation menu in the lower left corner
Click on Start timer
Select the time
Wait until the countdown is done
Pro tip: You can also use the hotkeys shown next to times above to start the countdown. By pressing them again on your keyboard you will add another minute/30 seconds/10 seconds to the countdown.