Mac Setup for Presentations: A Pre-Flight Checklist

Every presentation failure on a Mac comes from the same short list: a notification, a sleeping screen, a cluttered desktop or a display that mirrored when it should have extended. Run this checklist in the two minutes before you plug in and none of them happen.

Two minutes before you connect

1. Turn on a Focus mode. Control Centre → Focus → Do Not Disturb. Check Options once in advance and turn off time-sensitive notifications, which otherwise still appear.
2. Quit what you do not need. Not minimise, quit. Mail and Messages especially.
3. Hide the rest. With your presentation app in front, press Option-Command-H.
4. Hide desktop icons. One preference, and your files are untouched:

   defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder
   
   # after the talk
   defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop && killall Finder

5. Stop it sleeping. caffeinate -d -t 3600 gives you an hour and then releases on its own.

Get the display arrangement right

The moment you plug into a projector, open System Settings → Displays and check three things:

• Mirrored or extended. Mirroring is right for a room where you present from the same screen. Extended is right when you want presenter notes, and it is what Keynote and PowerPoint expect.
• Which display is primary. Drag the white menu bar strip to the display that should hold your menus and dialogs. If dialogs keep appearing on the projector, this is why.
• Resolution. Choose a scaled option showing Larger Text if the room is deep. Native resolution on a large projector is unreadable past the third row.

Do this before the room fills. Display arrangement is the one item on this list you cannot fix discreetly mid-talk.

The browser, if you are presenting from one

1. Use a separate profile or a private window, so autocomplete and open tabs stay yours.
2. Close tabs you do not need, or move them to a different window. Tab titles are readable from the back row.
3. Zoom the page with Command-Plus until it is readable, then check how it looks from the back.
4. Hide the bookmarks bar with Command-Shift-B.

Sound, which everyone forgets

If your deck has audio or video, check the output device in Control Centre → Sound once you are connected. HDMI usually claims audio output the moment it is plugged in, which means the sound goes to the projector's speakers whether you wanted it there or not. Play three seconds of something before the room fills.

Turn off interface sound effects too, in System Settings → Sound, so an alert beep never punctuates a slide.

Presenter tools worth knowing

• Keynote and PowerPoint presenter view both need an extended display rather than mirroring. If your notes are showing on the projector, that is the arrangement setting, not the app.
• Zoom the screen — turn on Accessibility → Zoom → Use scroll gesture with modifier keys. Holding Control and scrolling magnifies the area under the pointer, which is the fastest way to show a small detail without switching slides.
• Point with the pointer — turn on Accessibility → Display → Shake mouse pointer to locate, and consider raising the pointer size while presenting.
• Remote control — the Keynote Remote feature in the iPhone app drives the deck and shows your notes, which frees you from standing at the laptop.

After the talk

Put it back: desktop icons on, Focus off, and stop the caffeinate if you started one without a timer. The reason to use the timed form is exactly this — a Mac that never sleeps because of a command you ran last Tuesday is a battery problem you will not connect to the cause.