Speaker notes keep your talking points on hand without cluttering the slide your audience sees. Pair them with presenter view to run a live presentation with your notes, your current slide, and your next slide all visible to you, while your audience sees only the slide.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Add speaker notes
Open your presentation in the slide editor and select a slide. Below the slide canvas, click Add speaker notes and type the talking points you want to see when you present.
Speaker notes are per-slide and save automatically. They are visible only to users editing the presentation and to the presenter during delivery. They never appear to webpage viewers or in PDF or Microsoft Powerpoint exports.
You can format speaker notes with the text formatting toolbar that appears when you click into the notes area, including paragraph styles, bold, italic, and lists.
Use presenter view
When you are ready to deliver the presentation live, click the Present dropdown in the top toolbar and select Presenter view. A dedicated view opens and shows:
The current slide.
The next slide.
Your speaker notes for the current slide.
A slide counter and elapsed timer.
Your audience sees only the current slide in full screen. Use the arrow keys or on-screen controls to advance slides.
To present from the first slide regardless of which slide you are currently editing, select Start from beginning (⌘+Shift+Enter) from the Present dropdown.
Clicking the Present button directly (not the dropdown) starts the presentation from the current slide without presenter view — your audience and you both see only the slides in full screen. Use this mode when you do not need speaker notes on screen.
Both presenting experiences maintain a 16:9 aspect ratio, so slides look the way you designed them regardless of monitor size. Black bars may appear on wider or taller screens to preserve the ratio.
Tips for a smooth live presentation
Review your speaker notes in the slide editor before presenting. This is the fastest way to confirm they are complete on every slide.
Live fields and Aha! views update based on their update frequency setting. If you want the freshest data on screen, confirm each Aha! view is set to update live before you present. Click on the view to open the floating toolbar and adjust the frequency.
Close other browser windows and tabs before opening presenter view so your audience screen stays focused on the presentation.