Using Keynote Remote

With the latest versions of OS X, iOS and Keynote, you can use your iOS device as a sophisticated remote control for presentations running on your Mac. This lets you hook your Mac up to a projector or TV across the room and control it with your iPhone or iPad. You get much more than just basic buttons, as you can see the slide on your device and even draw on the slides with the results showing up on the Mac that is running the presentation.

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

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode let's take a look at using Keynote Remotes.
The idea behind Keynote Remote is you have your Mac is hooked up to a projector or television and you are going to use your iOS device, your iPhone or your iPad to control the presentation. You can do this over WiFi. The machines need to be on the same WiFi network and then you have to have Keynote installed on both of them, the latest version of course. 
Then you can actually use your iPhone or iPad screen as the presenter screen to control everything, even draw on the screen while your Mac is actually sitting wirelessly apart from you presenting on the display.
So on my Mac here I've got a sample presentation, just some sample slides, in Keynote. Note that I am running the latest Keynote, version 6.5. Now I'm going to link it to my iPhone. You can do this with any iOS device running iOS 8 or I believe you might need 8.1. You go to Keynote Preferences and here you go to Remotes and you want to enable Remotes here. Then it tells you what to do with your iPhone or iPad, which is to launch Keynote there.
In this window here you can see my iPhone. I've got Keynote running there. I'm going to hit that little remote button at the top left and that is going to bring up this screen which is going to just walk me through what it does. 
Now I get to this screen here and I can switch over and see what I've got going on on my Mac. You can see that my iPhone 6+ appears and I can hit link and it gives me a code that appears on both screens. I want to confirm that it is the right code.
Now on my iPhone screen I get this big Play button. So I can go ahead and hit that. I'm going to hit that on my iPhone screen.
So here is what I see on my iPhone. It switches to vertical mode for navigation. I can swipe to go from one slide to the next. In addition to that I've got tools on the upper right. For instance the pen tool there. If I tap that it will go back into horizontal mode and I can now draw on the slides.
So I've got these drawing tools at the bottom of the screen. I can change the color. I can then draw on the slide. I can go to the dot pointer there to point things out on the slide. I can Undo.
Now on your Mac screen this is what you would see. As I'm using my iPhone to go between slides it just goes between slides just like I was doing on the Mac.
When I bring up the Tools, I've brought up the tools now on my iPhone, but you don't see them at all here. I'm going to change to a color and you still don't see anything. But now as I draw you can see the result of the drawing and if I bring up the Pointer you can see the pointer move but you don't see the actual tools of course on the screen. You only see the results of them.
I've also got other tools I can bring up with my iPhone with that second to the last button on the top right. Bring that up and I can determine my layout options. So I can go from Portrait to Landscape to View in Landscape mode. I can show the current slide and the next slide. 
You have a lot of different options there for controlling it because most likely you will be using your iPhone or iPad and your Mac will be somewhere else like back by the projector in the back of the room or in an AV room or something like that. So you won't be able to see your Mac screen when using this, you will be able to see various things using your iOS screen.

Comments: 4 Responses to “Using Keynote Remote”

Ramayya

10 years ago

The HTML5 videos don't fill the screen in Safari under Mac OS X 10.10!

Sorry! I found that the Safari Extension "YoutubeWide 10.0" seems to be the culprit. Turning off this extension seems to take care of the problem.

David Wilma

What if I don't have access to the wi-fi network at the location. Can I use the hotspot on my iPhone to use Remote?

Ed R

It is confusing as to whether or not Keynote can be controlled remotely over Bluetooth. Keynote on the Mac says WiFi, on the iOS device it says WiFi or Bluetooth. Had some success with Bluetooth but the connection between the Mac and iOS device would drop frequently. Any insight on this?

Comments Closed.

Using Keynote Remote

Comments: 4 Responses to “Using Keynote Remote”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information