How to present online to a room that joins by a code

Get everyone on the same slide

The core of online presenting is sync: play, pause, and move forward and back from the keyboard or the on-screen dock, and every attendee’s screen follows in step, with your animations and any click-advance holds intact. You start from whichever slide you are on, so if you jump back to answer a question and then present from the current slide again, the room comes with you.

Because the audience receives the real deck rather than a video of your screen, motion stays crisp on their side and there is no lag from re-encoding a stream.

Set your pace before you start

Set each slide to advance on a timer or wait for your click, so the same deck can run itself in a loop for a lobby screen or follow your pace on stage. While you present, two clocks show how long you have been on the current slide and how long the whole talk has run, and reloading the console does not reset the total.

Tips for presenting online without losing the room

Open the chat early so people can settle questions in text rather than interrupting; you can pin a welcome line and one-tap questions for a specific deck in advance. Use the laser pointer and pen to direct attention instead of saying ‘this bit here’. Turn your webcam on for the opening and the close so there is a face on the talk, then let it drop back to the slides for the detail.

Work the raised-hand queue in order and mark each one handled, so nobody is forgotten and you keep control of who speaks.

Make it accessible with live subtitles

Turn on live subtitles for the whole audience with one button — in UK usage most people call these subtitles rather than captions — and keep a searchable transcript afterwards. It helps anyone in a noisy room, on a poor connection, or who simply reads faster than they listen. Real-time translation of those subtitles is not available in every browser, so do not rely on it.