Control your presentation

So, once you’ve started a presentation using the Presentation dialog, how do you control the presentation?

Basically, it’s as simple as just pressing the space bar to switch to the next slide. For more options, read on.

It’s important to understand “How Slide Presenter works” to gain a deeper control of your presentations layout.

What a presentation looks like

The presentation is 99% only your content, styled and layouted according to the theme you chose. The only additional UI elements are the navigation arrows at the bottom right. They behave like the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? to open a Keyboard shortcut overview.

Key	Purpose
`Space`	Next slide
`P` or `Shift + Space`	Previous slide
`Arrow keys`	Freely navigate through your presentation
`F`	Start full-screen mode
`O` or `Esc`	Toggle slide overview
`.` or `B`	Turn screen black to pause presentation
`Esc`	Stop full-screen mode or overview
`?`	Show keyboard shortcuts

Navigating the presentation

To switch to the next slide, just press the space bar. This is the default mode of presenting.
To navigate the columns and rows of your presentation, use the arrow keys. Down always means the next slide, Rightthe next column.
Holding Shift while pressing one of the arrow keys navigates to the last slide in the given direction. For example, Shift + Left always navigates to the title slide.

Why does a presentation have columns and rows?! Head over to “How Slide Presenter works” to understand the two simple layout principles Slide Presenter uses to create your slides.

Fullscreen mode

Presentations are better in fullscreen mode! Just press F on your keyboard to switch to fullscreen. You can leave the fullscreen mode by pressing ESC.

Blackout screen

Pressing b or . makes the screen go completely black. Press the key again to resume the presentation. This is useful if you:

Want to redirect the attention of your audience away from the presentation
Want to setup the whole presentation thing on a beamer or the like, then hide it so you can hit the ground running

Slide Overview

Pressing ESC or o (like “overview”) will take you into the slide overview. Here you can quickly navigate around in your presentation if for example somebody asks you "jump back to the slide with the video".

Remember that to use the overview in fullscreen mode, rather use the o key (as the alternative ESC would stop the fullscreen mode).

Next: Take your presentation game to the next level with our Slide Presenter Macros.