Using the Keynote Presenter Display

When giving a presentation with Keynote you can use the display on your MacBook to show you more than what the rest of the room sees on the main display. You can see the next slide, the time, and use tools to jump to slides and pause the presentation. You can also view your slide notes.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the Presenter Display in Keynote.
I'm using Keynote version 6 here. We're going to look at the Presenter Display which is your second screen you are presenting. Usually you've got a computer hooked up to a projector and the projector is showing the presentation. You are seeing something a little different on your screen. On your screen you are seeing the presenter display.
So I have a simple presentation here and when I hit Play what the main screen is going to show you is the slide of course. In the secondary screen, that can be my laptop display for instance, will show the presenter display. That is what we are going to see when I hit Play here. You see the presenter display come up.
It has various elements. I has a big clock at the top. Always important when you are presenting. It shows you the current slide on the left and the next slide on the right, important when you are presenting because you want to kind of mentally prepare for what you are going to say when you switch to the next slide. Sometimes there is something you want to say to introduce the next slide so you want to know what is coming up.
Now on the presenter display you can click to advance to the next slide but you can also use the arrows. You can use the forward arrow to go to the next slide, so that is what is being shown now, and you can use the backward arrow to go backwards. So you have some nice control there.
You also have a ton of keyboard shortcuts. It is hard to remember them all so the presenter display gives you the handy little Help here. Of course only you are seeing this on your display so you can kind of bring it up if you get stuck during a presentation and you want to remember something. Nobody else will be the wiser that you brought this up. So there is a lot of keyboard shortcuts you can use in doing a presentation.
You can also customize the presenter display. So, for instance, you can have your notes at the bottom. Very useful. You can say, no I don't want to see the next slide or I don't want to see the current. I want to focus on the next one. That is handy when you can really easily see the main presentation screen. 
Get rid of the clock. You can add a timer instead from when you started. Things like that. Elapsed time or remaining time with the set time there. So very handy to have. These are good tools for presentations.
What also is really cool is the Navigator here on the left. You can look at all the thumbnails for all of your slides and very quickly jump to one. So it is really handy. If you have a huge presentation you can enter a number in and hit go. So if you know that say slide 57 has some important bullets points on it and when you are done your presentation you can easily jump to that slide. So it is a really cool tool.
I also want to point out this button here which just Switch displays. So this is really handy. Sometimes you start a presentation and find out that your presenter display is up on the main screen and the presentation is up on your laptop screen. Just hit that button once and it swaps the two of them. So it makes it very easy to correct that problem if it occurs.
Then if at any time you want to quit the presentation there is many ways to do it. Like the escape key. But you can also just hit X here to exit the slideshow.

Comments: 18 Responses to “Using the Keynote Presenter Display”

Lance Rosenthal

11 years ago

Thanks for the tutorial. Is it possible to have the presenter display in a window so it doesn't take up the entire screen on the presenter computer?

Gary Rosenzweig

There's no function for that, as far as I know.

Ken C.

I'd be thrilled if Keynote didn't take up the entire screen, it's beyond a pain, especially if you need to do some work in the background, in my case do some recording with Garageband and keep the slides going.

Tripp Frohlichstein

I am a presenter and switch between video and slides. Therefore, I have to use mirroring. If I use Powerpoint, I still see the presenter display on MY screen. But with Keynote, I do not. Is there any way to use the presenter screen when using mirroring (since it works with Powerpoint)? Apple geniuses are befuddled by this...something Powerpoint does on a Mac that Keynote doesn't and don't know of a solution.

Kerry Millerick

You can drag and drop the *videos* into your slideshow, so you will not have to drop out of Keynote in mid-presentation. If you don't know when in your presentation you will need to see them, you can jump to your "video slides" out of sequence. (See Gary's tip)

Thanks Kerry. I do use videos in different orders depending on the audience. The problem is video controls in Keynote are more limiting than Quicktime. I appreciate the thought but am still wondering if there might be some hidden setting to make Keynote as good as Powerpoint when it comes to the presenter display.

Jeremy

Is there a way to see this presenter view without currently having a second screen connected?

Yes, Choose Play, Rehearse Slideshow.

Stacy

Is there a way to add on text while in presentation mode such that what I am typing in the presenter display is shown immediately onto the presenter's screen.

No, I don't think so. You edit in edit mode and present in presentation mode. You could always switch to another app, like a text editor or whiteboard app, and then switch back.

Brett

Gary, do you know of a way to disable advancing to the next screen using the mouseclick? I want to only advance by using the hyperlinks I've built into the presentation. Thank you!

Click on Setup a d go to Presentation setup. Look for Presentation Type. Set it to Links Only.

Mike

In presenter display mode, when you ESC to fix something or to work on something else, a default screen comes on (Galaxy pic). How can one change this background?

Do you mean the desktop background? You change that in System Preferences, Desktop & Background.

James

I need a way (today!) to see my slide thumbnails on the presenter display and then show them in a non linear order based on audience need. Any Mac OS application for that or ipad app?

Look for the "Show Navigator" button in the upper left when presenting. You can also have it appear by using the preference (Show slideshow navigator when scrolling).

August Berkshire

When I hit Show Navigator it also shows the Navigator on the screen. How do I set it so that only I see it?

Not sure if you can. Play around with the settings and try different things. But you may just have to use it as it is.

Comments Closed.

Using the Keynote Presenter Display

Comments: 18 Responses to “Using the Keynote Presenter Display”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information