How to Present a PDF on iPad (Complete Guide)

This is mini tutorial on how to present a PDF on iPad. We dig into details of the most important steps:

Create and Export Your Slides as PDF

Before creating you slides you should think of a plan for your talk. What is the message to deliver? Which hooks could help to keep the audience’s attention? Follow a clean and logical structure starting with an introduction, and an outline of your talk to make the audience curious. Plan a convincing conclusion and a take-away message. If your mind is made up,  start creating your slides. Your slides must support the planned course of your presentation, e.g. showing data or listing facts to support your point. Sometimes linking to media like websites or videos is a good choice. PDF and magicPresenter support this via hyperlinks. They can be used, e.g., to show entries of the Wikipedia, a video on YouTube, or some digital media stored on your iPad. If you want to use such content during your presentation, don’t forget to insert it into your slides before exporting them to PDF. Last but not least, it is always a good idea to include some amusements to keep your talk balanced.

There are plenty of apps that allow you to create slides in PDF.  You can use PowerPoint or Keynote for their easy usage or LaTeX and the Beamer class aiming at high quality typesetting. In any case, export features to create a PDF exist. To use your slides in magicPresenter, the only restriction for the slides is to have a landscape format, i.e., the width of the page must be larger than its height.

Import the PDF to magicPresenter

The next step is to import your PDF slides to magicPresenter. Just copy them into the magicPresenter directory on your iPad or use the share sheet and select magicPresenter as target. Afterwards, your slide deck becomes visible in the “Slide Decks” view of the app. There you can use folders to group several PDF files. This is recommended, e.g., for parts of a course. At later times, you can export slides with their annotations for printing, archive different versions of your talk, or replace one version of the PDF file by another after you have made changes to your slide. The latter is supported by magicPresenter using AI: Identical and similar pages are identified and proposed to align in order to keep text and annotations.

Put in Reminders as Textual Speaker Notes or Handwritten Annotations

Now comes the challenging part: your presentation needs to follow your plan. The most convincing speakers continuously face the audience. It is an advantage to speak freely. Nevertheless, you want at the right point use the right, perfectly formulated phrases that — for the sake of effect and the impression — should not show up on your slides. To this end, magicPresenter provides you with the best possible support during your presentation. You can implement your presentation plan perfectly with as little effort as possible and get to the heart of your thoughts in a lively speech with precise wording (in magic ink on the slides). Use textual speaker notes to record the intention of every slide. Use short, concise phrases to remind yourself of the message to be told. These notes are used best in order to prepare yourself shortly before your talk. However, they are helpful reminders during your presentation, too. To have pre-formulated phrases at hand, we recommend to use magic ink (invisible to the audience). This way, you can guide yourself through the presentation of every slide, highlighting, e.g., an ordering in which you want to address content of the slide, or reminding yourself on that special detail you should not forget to mention. magicPresenter allows to export annotations together with the speaker notes for preparation.

Connect iPad to Projector and Start

Last but not least, you have to connect your iPad to a projector. There are at leat two alternatives how this can be done: AirPlay or by cable (USB C or HDMI). We refer to Apple’s documentation for details. In any case, magicPresenter recognises an established connection and automatically starts using the projector screen. However, different to other apps, it just shows its own logo, keeping the content of your iPad’s display private. After opening a presentation, you decide when your slides become visible to the audience. You can use a remote control (presenter) to switch slides or control the virtual laser pointer. Any hyperlink is opened inside magicPresenter thus no changes between apps are needed. A builtin feature of our app lets you record (to mp4) and stream your talk, e.g. to YouTube. This allows further distribution of your material or to self-assess you talk.