Settings Mac

Use iA Presenter’s Settings panel to customize how you create and present slides.

Open iA Presenter → Settings, or press ⌘,.

General

Appearance

Choose a light or dark appearance for Presenter’s interface. Enable Match system appearance to follow your Mac’s appearance instead.

On macOS versions earlier than 26, a separate Dock icon setting lets you choose a light or dark icon, or match the app’s appearance.

Window

Enable Swipe to toggle Thumbnails and Inspector to show or hide the side panels with a two-finger trackpad swipe. On the left half of the window, swipe right to open Thumbnails and left to close them. On the right half, swipe left to open the Inspector and right to close it.

New Presentations

Set the text used when you create a new presentation. The default is iA’s tutorial, Fast and Focused. Replace it with your own starting text, choose Clear to start with an empty presentation, or choose Restore Default to bring back the tutorial. This does not change existing presentations.

Editor

Text size

Adjust the slider to change text size in the Editor and teleprompter. This does not change the text size on your slides.

Typography

Choose Mono, Duo, or Quattro for the Editor and teleprompter. Your slides use the fonts in their theme.

Line length limit

Set the Editor’s line width to 64, 72, or 80 characters. This changes how text wraps on screen without adding line breaks to your text.

Focus

Enable Focus on current slide to dim the text of other slides in the Editor.

Typing

Enable Three returns to start a new slide to insert a slide break by pressing Return ↵ three times. You can also add a slide break from the Text Inspector, or type three dashes --- on their own line.

Spelling and grammar

Choose which macOS spelling tools to use in the Editor:

• Check spelling while typing: Mark spelling mistakes as you type.
• Check grammar with spelling: Include grammar in spelling checks.
• Correct spelling: Correct spelling mistakes automatically.

Learn more in our Languages article.

Smart substitutions

• Copy/paste: Adjust spaces around words when inserting or deleting text.
• Quotes: Replace straight quotes "" with curly quotes “” as you type.
• Dashes: Convert two dashes -- into an em dash — as you type.
• Text replacements: Use the text replacements configured in macOS. Learn more on the Apple Support Page.

Presentation

Layout

Choose the default layout for presentations:

• Responsive: Adapt slides to the presentation screen.
• Fixed aspect ratio: Use Regular 4:3, Wide 16:9, Mobile 9:16, Portrait 4:5, or Square 1:1. thumbnails use the same aspect ratio.

A layout set for an individual presentation takes precedence over this default. PDF and image exports can use the presentation’s aspect ratio or a different one selected in the Inspector’s Share Presentation tab.

💡 Fixed aspect ratios are particularly useful if you’re sharing your slides to Social Media, which often have specific aspect ratio requirements.

Content

• Reduce text size to fit in slide: Shrink text when needed to fit the slide.
• Autoplay video: Start videos automatically when their slide appears in Presentation Mode.
• Show controls on videos: Display playback controls on embedded video files.

Learn more about video.

Focus

Enable Focus on current speaker note to emphasize the current note in the teleprompter and dim the surrounding notes.

Navigation

Enable Use custom navigation keys to assign keys for the previous and next speaker note, and the previous and next slide. Each action can use an arrow key, Page Up, or Page Down. Learn more about navigating slides.

Warnings

Enable Warn on empty slides with speaker notes to show a warning when a slide has notes but no visual content. Layouts designed to work without content are exempt.

Speaking Rate

Set your speaking rate in words per minute. Presenter uses it to estimate speaking time from your speaker notes. The default is 110 words per minute.

Themes

Install, create, remove, or reload Custom Themes. Use the plus menu to install or create a theme, and the minus button to remove the selected theme. Choose Reload Themes after editing a theme’s files.

Added themes appear at the bottom of the Theme menu in the Inspector’s Theme and Style tab. In the version downloaded from our website, sign in with an active license or subscription to use custom themes. They are unavailable during the trial.

Markdown

Single return starts a new paragraph

This option is enabled by default. Press Return ↵ once to start a new paragraph. Turn it off to use traditional Markdown, which requires a blank line between paragraphs.

On slides, paragraphs separated by a blank line form separate visual blocks.

Apply smart punctuation

Convert straight quotes and plain dashes to their typographic equivalents in formatted slide output. This option is off by default.

This changes rendered and exported slides without changing the source text in the Editor. To replace characters as you type, use Quotes and Dashes under the Editor’s smart substitutions.

Account

Available in the version downloaded from our website. This section shows your account, Presenter license or subscription, and Sharing status. The available actions depend on your account.

Sign In

Sign in to your iA Account to access your purchases.

Manage

Opens your iA Account in a browser to manage your purchase or subscription.

Sign Out

Signs out of your iA Account on this Mac.

Settings