Editor

The central Editor panel is where the magic happens: writing your narrative, adding visuals, and turning your content into slides.

Start Writing

When you open iA Presenter on your Mac you’ll first see Instant Slides, our in-app tutorial. To remove it and start writing your narrative, select all text and press delete.

💡 If you no longer need the tutorial and prefer to start with a different or blank presentation, go to Settings → General → New Presentations and add your own template text, or delete it altogether.

Start by writing your narrative, the story you want to tell. As you write, format your text using Markdown. You can also import existing text—from iA Writer, for example.

New Slides and Layouts

To create a new slide, either type three dashes ---, enter two line breaks, or use the Text Tab of The Inspector.

If you need a specific layout for your slide, click the + icon on the top-left of the Title Bar.

Presentation Options

In the Title Bar’s centre, click on the presentation’s name to rename it, save it elsewhere, lock it, or add tags.

Timer

On the bottom right of the Editor you’ll find a timer that estimates how long your presentation will take, based on your narrative. The time estimate updates in real-time as you write and edit.

Opening the Inspector

To show or hide the Inspector, you can:

• Go to Menu → View → Show/Hide Inspector
• Use the shortcut ⌥⌘I
• Swipe on your trackpad with two fingers from the right edge to the left

Formatting Text

If you don’t know Markdown yet, open the Text tab of the Inspector on the upper right. Select your text and choose a Markdown formatting option. Markdown covers basic stuff like bold or italics but also more complex formatting like tables, code and math.

The first category in the Text Tab is called Speech. Most of your narrative will probably be Spoken Text, but you can add lists or quotes here too.

💡 Keep in mind that any text in the Speech category won’t appear on your slides, but you’ll see it when you present.

The second category is called Text on Slide. Use it to add text that you want your audience to see. A faster way to do this is to add a tab ⇥ in front of your text.

Find Your Focus

With iA Presenter you can easily cut out all distractions while you’re writing.

Start by hiding both the Thumbnails View and the Inspector panels, which leaves only the Editor on your screen.

Then use iA Writer’s famous Focus Mode, which we integrated into iA Presenter too. Enable Focus Mode via:

• Menu → View → Focus Mode
• The shortcut ⌘D

Finally, maximise the window. There. Writing bliss.

💡 Compared to iA Writer, Focus Mode in iA Presenter works slightly differently. Instead of highlighting a paragraph or a sentence as in iA Writer, Focus Mode in iA Presenter focuses on the slide you’re writing.

Color Shift

You’ll notice that your cursor and slide titles gradually change color from blue to gold. Sure, it’s pretty—but it also shows you in which phase you are in a presentation:

• Blue is a cold start.
• Purple is warming up.
• Red is when things get hot.
• Orange prepares you for a sweet end.
• Gold is the afterglow.

Tip: Keep in mind that the colors you see in the Editor don’t affect the theme you choose.

Changing Editor Settings

You can tweak how the Editor looks and works via Settings → Editor. For example, you can switch between iA’s Mono, Duo and Quattro variable fonts, set up spelling and grammar, and smart substitutions.

Story

The Thumbnails

Preview, reorder, duplicate or delete your slides.

Import

Turn an existing Markdown text into a presentation in seconds.

Shortcuts

Navigate the app more efficiently by learning the shortcuts available in Presenter.

Backups And Recovery

Lost your progress in a presentation? Wishing you hadn't deleted that slide? No worries!