Presentation Remote Support
The last thing you need when you're preparing to give a presentation, is an extra thing to worry about. That's why we've kept Presentation Remote super-simple to set up and use. It's not just easier to learn — it also helps banish the nooks and crannies where problems like to lurk.
Computers will be computers, though. If you do run into difficulty, check this list of tips:
System Requirements
Remember, Presentation Remote requires:
- an iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 2.0 or later
- a Macintosh computer running OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") or OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard")
- Keynote '08 or Keynote '09
- Presentation Manager
General tips
- Make sure you have the latest version of Presentation Manager installed
- We recommend you don't close Keynote while Presentation Manager is running. If you do, the connection between them may be broken, and you would then need to restart Presentation Manager. (If this happens, a red "No presentations" warning will appear in Presentation Manager.)
If there is no Wi-Fi available
Your Macintosh computer can act as a temporary Wireless Access Point. Simply turn AirPort on and select Create Network... from the network menu. (For more details, see the this guide on setting up a local Airport network.)
If your iPhone or iPod touch does not show in Presentation Manager
- Check your device is switched on and running Presentation Remote.
- Check your device has Wi-Fi enabled and has successfully connected to the network.
- Check your computer is successfully connected to the network.
- Check your device is connected to the same network as your computer.
If no presentations appear in Presentation Remote
- Check your computer has not “gone to sleep”.
- Check your computer has Presentation Manager open.
- Check at least one presentation is open in Keynote.
- Check your presentation has been saved to disk in Keynote.
- Check your device is listed in Presentation Manager, and is paired.
- Check Presentation Manager can see the presentations
- If Presentation Manager can't find any presentations, a warning message appears in the bottom-right of the window
- If the warning message turns red, it means Presentation Manager has lost contact with Keynote. Restart Presentation Manager.
If you cannot highlight a slide
- Check that you have enabled the highlighter.
If you tap “Begin” but Keynote doesn't start the presentation
- Check you're using the latest version of Keynote (version 4.0.3 at time of writing)
- Use a Spotlight search to check if you have more than one version of Keynote installed — particularly if you've restored from a Time Machine backup. If you have multiple versions installed, Presentation Manager may not find the correct one.
If the wrong slide titles appear in Presentation Remote
Presentation Remote displays what Keynote thinks are the slides' titles. If this doesn't match what you see on screen, make sure what you're seeing in Keynote are actually titles! There are a couple of ways of doing this:
- If you go to the View menu and select Outline, the Outline panel on the left lists each slide, along with its title. You can simply click on a slide's title to rename it.
- If you open up Keynote's Inspector to the Slide panel and select the Appearance tab, you'll see a check-box labelled "Title" — if this is unchecked, try checking it — some extra text should appear on the slide itself. That is the text Keynote thinks is the slide's title.
Presentation Remote says "Double-click to edit" but I double-tap and nothing happens
Ah, that's because this isn't actually a message from Presentation Remote. When you create a new presentation, Keynote sets its title to "Double-click to edit" (to encourage you to set one, presumably). Since Presentation Remote displays the title in various places, if you haven't set one, Presentation Remote will faithfully pass this message on. You can set a title by going to the first slide of your presentation in Keynote. If you don't see the "Double-click" text, see the instructions above for editing slide titles.
If you see both the slides and presenter's notes squished together
- This happens if you have Keynote's Allow Exposé, Dashboard and others to use screen option switched off, and are using an outdated version of Presentation Manager. Update to Presentation Remote Manager 1.1 or later.
I can't see thumbnail previews for my presentation
In order to see thumbnails, you must include a preview in your presentation. The easiest way to ensure all your presentations contain previews is to enable this option in Keynote:
If you have an existing presentation, and want to add a preview to it, use "Save As..." and enable it there.
If none of that helped
Please, drop us a line and we'll try to sort it out for you!
It will help us track down a solution if you include the following information:
- The type of handheld you're using (iPhone 'original', iPhone 3G or iPod touch)
- System Profile:
- Open the Apple menu,
- Hold down the Option/Alt key, and About This Mac should change to System Profile.
- Choose it,
- When the System Profiler launches, save the profile as RTF format and attach it to the email
- Console log:
- Open Console (from /Applications/Utilities)
- Select All Messages in the Log List (click Show Log List first if necessary)
- Type presentation manager into the Filter box in the top right of the window
- From the File menu, use Save a Copy As... to save the log, then attach the file to the email
Thanks!

