User Reviews for Keynote

0 out of 5

0 Ratings

1 month ago, The Unpronounceable Nickname

Exceptional platform that needs to update features

Kaynote's terrific. However, with Figma, Canva, and the Adobe Suite out there, it seems like it's time to add more features and design tools. For instance, Figma has the ability to add features with plug-ins, e.g., free illustrations. And others have easier-to-accomplish presentation animations - even partially automated. Also, with the rise of AI, it would be great to have Keynote assist more in making presentations. I know this is a big one, but that's something Canva's already doing. All of the Apple apps could use a similar refresh that helps make them easier and faster to use. I know Apple's likely working on it -- I guess I'm just saying I'm looking forward to (i.e., sincerely hoping for!...) a bigger evolution in Keynote and other Apple apps soon. I don't want to spend the time just complaining about what's not there. Most importantly, I've done very good work with Keynote. That's the bottom line. But that's exactly why I'd like to use it for more tasks.

6 years ago, Useful in my research

Essential in presenting scientific research with one minor defect

I have recently started using Keynote for my presentations as a substitute for Latex and Powerpoint. While the output in Keynote looks much better compared to the previously mentioned softwares, I have been suffering from a defect which might be happening to other users too. Its regarding dragging objects around on a slide. Lets say I write an equation using Latexit or say copy and paste an image from my computer, it sometimes get “stuck” and won’t move around when selected and dragged around. It will eventually but I have no clue as to the origin of the problem. This is time consuming and annoying while editing presentations at the last minute or in general. I haven’t found a good solution to this problem online. The typical solution suggested is to use coordinates which works but sometimes and more often you would like to place the object according to your liking which is difficult to judge from the coordinates. Compared to Keynote, it is seamless in Powerpoint to drag and drog items. Barring this issue, Keynote is a wonderful software, easy to start with and highly useful in presenting your research anywhere.

3 months ago, lkqefjshgkb A

ok but

Keynote has certain frustrating limitations. When animating on a video, you are not able to start playback of the video until the animation is complete. ANY animations lock you out of other controls. Say you are following a presenter and they speak faster causing you to have to go forward, Keynote does not allow you to skip the animation easily, and if you do skip, it isn't in a way that hides the change, you will get an ugly jump to the end of the animation insteads of just moving forward to the next slide. The group numbering and ordering is a little confusing and also limited especially standing out when having multople items in the build order with delay timings, as the delays don't necessarily connect to the start action but the prior object in the build order. It is also frustrating to not be able to stack build items to create even more detailed animations. Keynote is great for basic presentations and handles video playback well. As presentations get more advanced, I find that a lot of the work has to be done outside of Keynote and brought in, or ideas just have to be simpified to work within Keynote's parameters.

1 year ago, bcredskins

Keynote is a powerhouse tool...for everyone!

Keynote for macOS consistently impresses with its easy-to-use interface, rich feature set, and stunning graphics capabilities. The application enables users to create professional-grade presentations with minimal effort and maximum efficiency. Keynote's suite of tools is both intuitive and versatile, catering to users of all experience levels. Beginners can start crafting high-quality presentations right away using beautifully designed templates, while more advanced users can delve into custom animations, transitions, and a myriad of formatting options. One of the standout features of Keynote is its seamless integration with the Apple ecosystem. Whether you're working from your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, your presentations are always in sync, thanks to iCloud. Collaboration is also a breeze, with real-time editing and commenting features that facilitate effective team projects. Moreover, the application's performance is incredibly smooth, providing a responsive and fluid experience even when dealing with large files or complex animations. The ability to export presentations in various formats including PowerPoint and PDF is another handy feature, making sharing and accessibility easy. Keynote is an outstanding tool for creating presentations on macOS. Its rich set of features and user-friendly interface make it a powerful, reliable tool for both personal and professional use. Power on!

2 years ago, plainbellied

Live Captions Are Needed

I've been using Keynote to build lecture presentations for university courses since shortly after it was originally releasted in 2003. My needs tend to be pretty simple, and I find that it suits me much better than PowerPoint does. The user interface works very well for me, I like the templates, and it integrates multimedia files like movies really well. In the last couple of years, however, I've focused more on making my presentations accessible to those with disabilities. Because Keynote doesn't create live captions, I've had to switch to PowerPoint for presenting in class (I still use Keynote to build the presentations). I'm hopeful that Apple's systemwide live captions feature (still in beta in Macos Ventura 13.1) will allow me to go back to presenting with Keynote, but the feature isn't functional in that way yet. When I start the presentation, the live captions don't show up on screen. I'm hopeful that Apple will implement something like what they're doing for the live captions in FaceTime (on a per-app basis), but it's just not there yet.

5 years ago, CowInvasion1

Awesome and free

Ok, This app may often fall under that shadow of the "almighty" microsoft Powerpoint. But it has almost, maybe even as much, maybe even more features than Powerpoint. But you want a simple, easy to understand reason why Keynote is better? Well, Keynote is free. Now how much is Powerpoint? Not 10, not 20, not 40, but 140 dollars. I am not joking. Sure, you could buy office, which is less. But not free. The cheapest plans are 70 dollars a year or a 150 dollars one time purchase, which is even more than powerpoint. But let's move on from the price. Sure, there are reported issues. But they're more annoyances than roadblocks, and I've never actually encountered any of them, except for the having to update thing but all that requires you to do is, well, update Keynote. And, there are complaints for Powerpoint too. So, the conclusion is, Don't buy Powerpoint. Use this for free.

8 months ago, Brielle1111

the new update is causing exporting problems.

i am a consistent user of keynote. i am super advanced with this program and very knowledgeable of everything keynote does. i use this program every single day for business and projects. i know every feature, every button, every shortcut, every update-- i know it all. have been using this for years. this is how i make my income, so it's safe to say i know what i'm talkinng about. there is a bug since the new update that makes videos glitch when exporting in movie. it plays fine when you're watching it in the keynote application. but when you you export a project as a movie, it glitches uncontrollably. the videos won't even play all the way through, they just continue to skip repeatedly. again, i am not a beginner by far. i have tried everything. everyhing that is possible to try. even live chatted with apple support. apple, please take care of this. some of use use this for work, school, business meetings, etc and it is very important that we have our reliable app back and functioning properly. fix this FAST. please.

2 months ago, John California

Very Strong Presentation Program

I have been using a Mac since February of 2008 and I love the productivity suite that comes free with Mac. Power Point has an associated cost with it. Keynote is the industry leader in presentation software and it really lives up to its name. The transitions are smooth, flawless, and easy to setup. The program is very user friendly and you will be making professional looking presentations in no time. One of my favorite features is the ability to remove background from pictures and put an absolutely amazing shot of just what you want to see on the screen. Do yourself a favor, if you have a Mac and don't have keynote, download it and play with it. It is free and powerful! Thanks Apple. One feature I really need is the ability to add music from my library into a presentation.

1 year ago, l'vebeenhad400

Keynote is the Best

Having been raised on PowerPoint for over 25 years, I held the belief that no other application could surpass its excellence. However, I have come to realize that my assumption was mistaken! Once you grasp the fundamental principles and tools of this application, the rest of the learning process becomes a breeze and is a great joy. You will discover that it offers greater flexibility, making it easier to assemble your ideas and it surpasses PowerPoint by a thousandfold in assisting you with tasks beyond just creating presentations! Keynote is powerful and I’ve never had the night mare presentation issues that I’ve experienced again and again with PowerPoint. I can shoot my mouth off about this application for hours. But I think you get my point.

1 year ago, Nick Asatourian

Not the same Apple

Under every single Apple CEO in history, software was of equal importance to hardware. Under Cook, this company is now a shell of its former self. The most basic functions needed in Keynote are still missing nearly two decades in. Snapping is still atrocious, alignment is still broken, bezier and curve points are still stuck in the 90's, you can't change font defaults; so if you hate Helvetica with a passion like I do, too bad because it loads every time. We barely got gradient fonts. Animation is still archaic to the point of being useless. I still don’t understand why this app doesn’t have some of the basics of Motion without all the unnecessary advanced features. This should be a stripped down version of Motion or After Effects or even the long EOL’d LiveType. Why, after nearly 20 years, can’t I do basic Kinetic typography? Apple could take Keynote to a whole new level if they focused a bit more on pushing Kinetic Typography. Maybe even acquire and incorporate ArtText from BeLight for some nice font customization.

2 years ago, Bayofpigs57

Trash

Some of the most basic quality of life features are missing from Keynote and other similarly terrible Mac apps like Pages. Perfect example, I can't scroll through the slides. I won't even go further than that because there issues go much further and deeper than something as simple as that. And I think something as basic and almost neccessary for any application like this should be an absolute given.. and yet even after seeing people mentioning this in online forums as far back as almost 10 years ago paints a picture that apple not only does not care to listen but truly does not care about these kinds of products of theirs since Microsoft probably dominates anyways but this kind of behavior has offically driven me away. Truly upsetting, frustrating and dissapointing such a large corporation can't do some minor alterations for these apps. Such small changes could make large differences but nope. Apple is content with how it is. Keynote is trash and Powerpoint is not. Sad to say but true.

2 months ago, paleontologist

So helpful when I taught.

Powerpoints were the thing later in my teaching career. I fnally got a video projector about 5 years before i retired. I had always avoid Powerpoint for Mac because I figured it was difficult and because of course it was Microsoft. But there was Keynote challenging me to do something. No instructions, no problem. My first presentation in less than an hour. Soon I had churned one out for every chapter in my Earth Science book. Best off my photographs of earth and its features found their way in to make the presentatioins personal. So here I am today, 14 years after retirement re-doing one for my junior rockhounds club. It is still a teaching passin of mine. And Keynote is something I can still count on.

5 years ago, Eberg1133

Update adds and takes away.

Keynote has been recieveing some big updates recently: the object list, text masking, and collaborative enhancements have made it an incredible design and storytelling tool. Other features are added that take away some of its functionality and have left me (a power user) feeling frustrated. One example: the new 'face detection' feature. This feature is intended to make masking images of humans easier by centering the content on ther face. sounds great on paper, however the feature was implemented with zero options, parameters, or variables. This means that if you are creating a custom shape (to cut out a person or achieve another artistic effect) the subject is repositioned within the mask. This is incredibly frutrating and feels like a major step backwards. Please Apple Keynote team - if you read this review (or the other feedback I have submitted) add an option to disable face detection,.

5 years ago, Mickey Schafman

Quirky and unstable

I’ve been using Keynote for “slide” presentations for a dozen years or so, and I always do so with great trepidation. I’m sitting here now having been working all afternoon on a presentation that must be done in three days. I constantly save my project offsite because you never know when Keynote is going to simply quit or drop photos or do something that’s unexplainable. Today, it began telling me that Autosave no longer was working, so I frequently did a manual save. Suddenly, Keynote dumped on me, trashing most (but not all) of my work. I opened my offsite saved copy, which was largely intact, but there were still a couple of missing photos. A prompt came up that said something to the effect “Your images may not look the same.” Huh? I’ve been trying to download the newest version now for about a half hour, but it won’t complete the download. I guess I’m going to have to switch to PowerPoint. Sad.

1 year ago, Xesiom

Needs Artifical Intelligence

Smart Slide Design: Artificial intelligence can analyze the content of slides and automatically suggest suitable layouts, fonts, and color schemes to create visually appealing presentations. Speech Recognition and Transcription: AI-powered speech recognition technology can be integrated into Keynote to automatically transcribe spoken words into text, making it easier to create accurate and professional-looking slide content. Smart Formatting: With AI, Keynote can automatically adjust and optimize the formatting of text, images, and other visual elements to ensure consistent and polished presentations. Intelligent Slide Navigation: AI can enable smart navigation features in Keynote, allowing presenters to easily jump to specific slides or sections based on keywords or pre-defined criteria. Language Translation: By leveraging AI language processing capabilities, Keynote can provide real-time translation of presentations into different languages, enabling seamless communication with a global audience. Content Suggestions: AI algorithms can analyze the presentation content and provide suggestions for relevant images, videos, or charts that can enhance the overall message and impact of the slides.

1 year ago, Another usually grumpy user

Keynote review

Summary: Very close to amazing. There are a few features of keynote that I just love. (i) PDF is a native format and this implies all sorts of good features. I often revise my slides as I make a new model or get more data and this often means that I resize graphics and plots. The fact that KN never rasterizes the images means that I never have the issues with obviously pixelated images that I used to have in PP. (ii) (Little known feature that is well documented on the web.) All the media in the presentation are stored in the KN file in a recoverable format. Lost that movie that you placed in your talk a year ago? Never fear. You can essentially "cd" into the power point files and "cp" that movie. This has saved me countless times. (BTW: it is actually a zip file now but read all about it on the web.) (iii) tex equation support is pretty good. Have you been struggling to show math? KN supports many tex equation features. What could be improved: Drawing Bézier curves should be more similar to Adobe Illustrator. Video codecs: Why is this still and issue that we even have to think about? Somebody talk to somebody and fix the legal(?) problems.

4 years ago, DJ Stinky

Keynote is good software

Apple does a great job making software that runs great with little or no bugs, unlike any competition. The problem is that I created a beautiful presentation on my iPad, but couldn't export the presentation as a quicktime movie. To do that, I would need to open the presentation in Keynote on my Mac. My Mac is just old enough that I can't run the latest OS that the latest Keynote supports and Apple does not offer an older version of Keynote that will run on the lates version of Mac OS that my Mac can run, El Capitan. Why Can't I just export my presentation on my iPad to a movie file? That is insane, since iOS is more than capable of doing that. I upgraded my MacBook Pro to the latest version for other reasons and exported my presentation to a movie. All is well.

3 months ago, Larry M710

Keynote Does it All!

I've been using Keynote for years, teaching Bible classes at my church. I prepare my lessons on my MBP, because KN is more robust on MacOS. I put all my speaking notes in the "presenter notes". Keynote is perfect! I present on my (1st gen 12.9") iPad Pro, and "screen mirror" to either a smart TV, a Mac running the projector, or an old Apple TV, I carry in my bag. On the iPad, it takes a little experimentation, but once set up it displays the same every time. While teaching, my slide is seen by the class, my iPad displays a small slide with my notes next to it. Keynote also allows me to draw (choice of color) on the screen in real time using my finger, or better yet my Apple Pencil. Keynote is free with all MacOS and iOS products!

1 year ago, CEj 64579

So much more pleasant to use than PowerPoint!

Keynote is easy to learn, easy to use, and looks great. Plus, since it is not PowerPoint, your presentations will have a fresher look, and if you (sparingly) use transitions, they will be new to much of your audience. Also, Keynote is free of the many ugly and annoying things that makes PowerPoint seem cheap and poorly thought out. Finally, I use lots of scientific diagrams in my lectures, and I often modify the figures by adding boxes to cover up material that is irrelevant/confusing to my class and yellow arrows and colored text to emphasize the key points of my figures. This is all easy to do, but it leads to the the only stupid thing about Keynote: I'd like to be able to export Keynote as PDFs for the class in which the background color is absent, but the colored boxes, arrows, and text that I added maintain their color fills. The boxes and arrows for some reason become transparent and thus reveal the confusing stuff I was trying to hide. The text turns black, which removes the emphasis I wanted to add. But, overall, an excellent program that I have been using for YEARS.

2 days ago, jketterling

Absolutely KEY tool to my ecosystem

I cut the cord from all Microsoft products in about 2005 and have NEVER ONCE looked back. Apple KeyNote is far superior for doing Graphics Arts, Presentations and Animations. I have used Keynote every day of my life since cutting the cord. Keynote is a part of the Apple ecosystem - so once you make that committment to LEARN it and USE It - you will disocver that everything you learned in one of their products is 1:1 reused in ALL their products. I make long and in depth animated presenations and graphics presentations melding together all Apple Products into symphony concert. WOULD DIE if this tool every ended -- I would retire. I will NOT GO BACK to the dark side..

3 years ago, SBCpp

My favorite presentation app

I have used it since it first came out years ago and never looked back. Just like Pages and Numbers, it is less cluttered and bloated than MS PowerPoint, elegant, visually pleasing, versatile, stable, does everything I need it to do and more. My presentations always look great, and I often make them first in Keynote then expoert to PowerPoint if I need to present on a PC. It is also easy to use and works seamlessly across Macs and iOS devices, with the added safety and security that comes with using the Apple ecosystem. Apple apps set the standard for how Mac apps should be like. I only use PoerPoint when I have to, not because I want to. Thank you Apple!!

6 years ago, Donjovi

Simple, Elegant and Effective

I love this app. I have to use powerpoint and times and find it to be far more capable than what I need. I do quite a few presentations and keynote it more than capable itself. One of the best features is the ability to create multiple slides by dragging and dropping them on to the app. Each item is created as its own slide. I like to collect data/images outside of the app in a folder and then dump them all in. This makes it fast and precise over having to import each into a new slide as I have had to do in the other program. There are plenty of presentation states and the tools abound. Thanks for a great app and for the years of providing it.

6 days ago, deafneo

Keynotes Beats MS Powerpoint IMO...

Hello Yes I do like Powerpoint but for some odd reasons the Layout or the GUI of it is bit more confusing verses Keynotes. Keynotes can be confusing if you not sure how it or whatere the features are. I feel that Powerpoint as much it is a powerful app but has too many features all over the place and you have to figure things out on it before you can really create a beautiful slides. As for Keynotes is simple yet you can still create beautiful or stunning slide shows.. However when it comes to Keynotes on ipad is another story.. It's not as friendly or easily to navigate with as using on MBP... Other than that it's a great app!!!

2 months ago, Vickmnc84

The BEST Free Presentation Software

I have been using Keynote for 12 years, and it is simply the best for everything! If you want to present using video or music from your library, Keynote has your back. Whether you need to create simple or complex animations, Keynote can do that too. If you need tools to craft an eye-catching yet clear and concise pitch for a business meeting or to update a project, Keynote should be your app of choice. If you need to collaborate with others, Keynote allows you to share the presentation with your team and even convert your presentation to PowerPoint for Windows users. Simply put, Keynote is the best free presentation software for Mac users.

10 months ago, MichaelFlyer

Great Interface On Mac Or iOS

I can create presentations faster that look better on my iPhone than on a desktop using Powerpoint. The interface is better, and works well between the Mac desktop version and iOS version. There are few things that would make it a lot better. Having more than two document sizes in the menu. Having custom document sizes in inches (like real business people use) and not "points". Having better screen to printout dimensions, interface, and results in general. And being able to pick my own zoom, not limited to the presets.

1 year ago, B.Atalay

Superiority of Keynote

Experienced in presentations using both Keynote and PowerPoint, I've come to prefer Keynote. This could be because I've long prefered MacIntosh computers to PCs. A good friend, a Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, and I've long agreed on the choice of platforms. The great Italian novelist Umberto Eco, a Catholic, once wrote, "Apples (Macs) are the Catholics of the computer world, the PCs are the Protestants, who can interpret things they way they like. My Nobelist friend echoed Eco, "When the girls went away to college, we admonished them, "Date within the religion. Stay away from PC users." So, returning to Keynote vs. PowerPoint, the Mac's choice of a presentation tool, is Eco's choice, my Nobelist's choice, and my choice.

6 years ago, Jess💛💙💙

Saves me a lot of struggle

One thing with windows is the complexity of it’s software for presentations. Never have I had a problem with Keynote in the many years I’ve used it. Many students use chromebooks and windows software in general. Although this is the case for many, my school does not. They use apple devices and applications with school activities. Through out my years as a student I’ve done many presentations using this software. Yet, I haven’t had any issue with keynote. Though many seem to be critical about the software, it’s always been an amazing thing to have and I hope many people will come to see that.

3 months ago, Bindenco2

Wow!!! Presentation perfection! Must have tool!

Keynote has been my presentation of choice for a solid 10 years and can say it is vastly more intuitive than ALL of the competitors. I love that it's vector based and the tools are so simple to use. Anyone looking to create simple presetations, web graphics, or even print can do it all here. I created templates for optimal size images by social platform and create from there. Using Keynote in conjunction with Pixelmator Pro, iMovie, and a few other image EXIF editors and converters to AVIF files, there isn't much missing for almost any and all small business needs. A must have! 10/10!!!

2 months ago, KQS Echo Guy

Best presentation software for medical videos

Diagnostic medical videos are typically one cardiac cycle in duration (about 1 second). To be viewable, the presentation software needs to be able to play individaul medical videos in loop format without any hint of a delay. Most other presentation software creates a hesitation everytime the loop repeats, resulting in jerky non-lifelike playback. The make matters more difficult, the presentation software has to be able to play medical video loops back without hesitation, even with 2, 3, 4 or more unequal length videos are all playing simultaneously. Keynote does this without issue, PowerPoint does not.

1 year ago, Steve Mouzon

Crash & Burn - Not

I tried several times to learn PowerPoint on the day of the presentation, but crashed and burned every time. When Keynote originally came out in 2003, I tested it under the same conditions, and it was a breeze to learn. I was an instant convert. But I realized that PowerPoint had been around for 16 years by then, so feature creep could certainly complicate things, and wondered what would become of Keynote. As it turns out, quite a number of features have been added, but none, IMO, at the expense of the core simplicity of operation, even this year when it's 20 years old. Well done!

1 year ago, User_Co

Keynote Feedback

- Prior to the last update, I was able to copy and share a link via collaboration in any interface. Example: I use Slack to share keynote links with coworkers. Now I have to paste the shared link into a web browser first and then copy and paste the link from there and send. For some reason when attemting to paste the link directly from Keynote to Slack, the link does not populate. - With the new option to view activity from collaborators came the option to disable the notification when a collaboratior joined a presentation. To my knowledge, you can only view the notification settings on an individual Keynote presentation. It would be great if you could disable notifications across all shared links. I create and collaborate across alot of presentations and do not always disable every notification per link. - To that note, I will sometimes get a notification multiple times saying someone is joining and leaving but they have reported they are not even actively in the link - I like the new Remove Background feature that got added/replaced Instant Alpha!

2 months ago, sandrifting

One of my favorite apps

I love Keynote -- it is truly one of my favorite apps to use. It is so much easier to use than the big office competitor, has less bloat, and is more aesthetically pleasing (IMO) slide templates. I can export to another format (PDF, PPTX) if needed, and I commonly do that with no problems. I do wish there was a little more flexibility in terms of custom page sizes. Not everything I create is shown to an audience on a screen -- sometimes it's just a file for communicating visual information with minimal narrative text. Otherwise, there's very little I don't like about this program.

1 week ago, CollinV89

My favorite app

I've been using Keynote for 20 years and it is by far the best presentation software. Whether creating a LIVE presentation to be presented over Zoom with bullet and image builds or a print-worthy PDF, Keynote allows me to build exactly what I want as efficiently as possible. I use Keynote nearly every day and have tried multiple alternatives over the years but have never found anything as powerful, customizable or easy to use. Clients and colleagues alike are typically stunned by my Keynote presentations and ask how they too can create such amazing presentations.

6 years ago, akthemusiclover

Keynote is a work of art

I absolutely love keynote. I don’t actually use it to make slides, but instead use it as a tool for doing quick UI mockups. Everything from the color picker that works across images, to the nice haptic feedback on the mac trackpad when things snap into place, to the ability to export QuickTime movies from a presentation, is so nice about this program. One very minor nit, I just wish it would natively support SVG images. It’s annoying to have to convert all my SVGs before I import them. Apart from that, this program is amazing and I am a fan.

3 months ago, james dale

Needs a few things

I love this program, but there are a few things mising. My main complaint deals with transitions. When creating a list of items, you cannot make one item not transition (like a header) while the others do. Sometimes when I change to a new slide I want the first line in my list to already be visible and then transition into the others. You can't do that with Keynote. It's either all or none, unles you make a second text box. PowerPoint offers more detailed control. I use both but would like to see KeyNote expand options and offer various layout templates.

2 months ago, Jkgapps

Equal sign alignment

Once upon a time, keynote used to automatically align equals signs in maths equations if you wrote equations on successive lines. Since around 2020 or so, this feature has disappeared. It seems like either an oversight or something that someone didn't understan as a genuine convenience in presenting mathematics. Now, if I want to animate successive equations one line at a time, with equals signs aligned, I have to use the \align environment in the equation editor and create masks that need to be removed to reveal the equation. This is several times more cumbersome than the previous auto-aligned equals signs. Bring it back and I would say it's a 5-star app.

3 years ago, S_Power

Still has a tab drawing bug 1 year after the release of the previosu version

Open a keynote presentation. It will use the nice new Big-Sur-style side bar. Now open a number of others in additioanlm tabs. The first tab will dispaly the modern sidebar with your thumbnails going all the way to the top of the window. Now switch to the other tabs. They will show the old style sidebar with the toolbar going the full width of the window *but* the thumbnails will be partially hidden under the tool bar. A celar drawing bug in the transition from the old style to the new in Big Sur. One year later the bug is still there in this new version. I've submitted a bug report on this twice. I live in Keynote daily, always with multiple presentations open in tabs. This bug is a real usability issue. Please fix!

1 year ago, Songbird 47

My "go to" for presentations

I started a long time ago with PowerPoint when it was introduced. Back then, it was only for Macintosh. Then, I transitioned to an presentation application distributed by Adobe. It was even better. Then along came Mac OS X and the introduction of Keynote. I immediately jumped on the bandwagon because it found it so much easier to use yet flexible. In comparing that to Microsoft's PowerPoint of today, Keynote is far superior. The style sheet approach of Apple is just superior. Why go with an app that makes you fit in rather than go with an app that makes you stand out?

1 year ago, Mr. Jesse Person

An Awesome Tool

I have used this app for six years as a teacher. It's an invaluable tool. I love it and I find it super helpful. I live in China and we use these flat screen Seewo computers in the classroom. When I export my keynote presentations to a .ppt document sometimes the formating can get screwed up. Other than that, I haven't really had a problem with it. If you have huge PPTs with over a thousand slides and many videos in it, sometimes it can take a bit to process or even have some glitchyness to it. But it's really an amazing tool at the end of the day!

5 years ago, Toddwfisk

Don’t Download This! CAn’t Open ANY of my old files!

So I innocently download all the Mac ‘office’ updates (tho I only really use Keynote instead of powerpoint) and now ALL my keynote files (ones I created last week even) give me an error message, basically: "unable to open keynote file because it isn't a valid keynote document.” When I google how to fix it, there is only a single-file fix option which involves either going into each file and changing it to a zip or pdf file, then resaving it, blah blah blah. Please don’t make the mistake I did! WAIT until they’ve got the bugs worked out on this latest update first. OR be prepared for your files to be held hostage by some stupid bug and be faced with MASSSIVE amounts of work to get them all back and working. Updates re supposed to FIX bugs, not give you new ones! AWFUL.

1 year ago, Lunchbreak11

Best elementary presenter

Although not as capable of more advanced graphic presentations available, Keynote is much easier than other conventional presentation software generally included with as standard software for computers and laptops. Other more advanced systems cost a lot of money and takes a lot of instructions to adaquately use. I use Keynote for teaching classes twice a week and love the simplicity and speed of professtional design freatures for graphics, importing video clips and music. Makes the class much more attentive and interested in the topic.

4 years ago, gdmbenson1

Play in window function please!

I love Keynote, I use it all the time for all sorts of presentations, and I would give it 5 stars but for one glaring issue. There is no option to play a presentation in a window—when I play the presentation it goes straight to full screen. This was OK in the past but because of Covid-19 and now having to give presentations very frequently over Zoom, having a 'play in window' function is essential and would make this app infinitely more useful. PowerPoint has it, and I'm sure Apple does not want to fall behind Microsoft! Please can the developers of this app make a play in window function happen???

1 year ago, lriachi79

Collaboration

Since a recent update to Keynote, the collaboration feature has gone from help to hinderance. It's become a maze every team member tries to navigate each time. It's confusing, often doesn't work. Producing a lot of errors. It's become slow. And whenever it does work and you choose the option to copy link, you cannot paste that link anywhere. We accidentally discovered a hack that we need to paste the link in a browser, then copy it again from there to be able to paste it in an email or a slack message. We use keynote collaboration for 90% of our work, and it's become very disappointing recently.

5 years ago, ADownpour

Collaboration needs to be better!

I really like Keynote, it is the solution to so many different jobs that go so far beyond a simple presentation. Recently we started using collaboration through iCloud, which is a game changer with multi-user editing... we nearly had the Windows users and PowerPoint pros switching over. And then we ran into "you can't edit objects within a group in shared documents." What should have been a no-brainer upgrade for the team turned into an apology tour, trying to explain why we chose to go with Keynote instead of another presentation software when basic functionality wasn't available. If collaborative mode was as full featured as the core product, this would be 5-star app. As it stands, it doesn't hold up.

2 years ago, geraldfox1954

Great but...

I have been using this for ages and it does make stunning presentations. In that 5 stars. However it lacks some of the features that make it useful in education. The ability to make a button for example that triggers an action on the same page. As an educator, it would be great to make flipover card memory games without having to make a seperate slide for each. Powerpoint is a pain to use but frankly is scriptable and can do so much more. I really "want" to use it but it is lacking ...

2 months ago, SteveBReviews

Keynote works well, but could improve a bit

Keynote does most things PowerPoint does, and a few things PowerPoint doesn't. At times, it's difficult to figure HOW to make Keynote do what you want. Thank Google and ChatGPT for the times when it's not intuitive. When exporting as a PowerPoint presentation, not everything carries over. You'll lose some fonts (understandable), fine tuned layout, and some transitions (Magic Move). To make the PowerPoint work, you'll need to open the presentation in PowerPoint and change a few things (location, font size, font face, transitions).

3 years ago, RainyToast

Video play bug is frustrating

I really love using Keynote for presenting my work. Howver, recently there is an annoying bug that videos won't play in the presentation mode. The video stays still when I click the right arrow key, and clicking it again goes to the next slide! It happens a lot (3 out of 7 vides in my slides) and kinda randomly (the videos not playing are differently each time in the presentation mode). I would really appreciate the team if they can fix this bug. Thank you!

3 months ago, mgriffgirl

Catastrophically Flawed and Virtually Useless for Professionals

Pros: • Easy to use for novices building small presentations or people who don't care about producing quality presentations • Unlike Keynote's web-based compeitor presentation program, at least you can kern lettering • Comes with your Mac Cons: • Bloated file sizes • Cannot collaborate if over 1GB (doesn't take much to get there) • Cannot replace images at same scale & placement inside bounding box, you have to resize & reposition it within the bounding box EVERY SINGLE TIME • Dragging slides from one deck to another automatically imports the slide's template, even if you already have that template in the destination deck— Guess what, now you have TWO templates by the SAME NAME and get to figure out which one is the correctly formatted template! Then you get to REAPPLY THE CORRECTLY FORMATTED TEMPLATE to the slides affected by the "contaminated" version • Defining slide number format must be set for each template page, good luck sorting that out when you've imported said contaminated templated slides by the same name, the numbers just go rogue. This is problematic for large presentations with a lot of slide templates.

2 months ago, Momontext

Love Keynote

I have been using Keynote for years. It is easy and has great graphic power. I can use both Keynote and Powerpoint and infinitely prefer Keynote. I wish they would bring back the fuzzy edges for inserted pictures and make it possible to more easily create templates. However, I love how easy it is to insert all sorts of media. Oooh the other thing I wish is that there might be even more ways to animate inserted graphics -- like gluing them in or rolling them out or well -- just more. But I am quite happy with it.

3 months ago, Find a Better Way to Workout

HUGELY INCONVENIENT Missing Master Slide Feature

The program does a lot of things right but one thing it doesn't do is have a Master Slide Feature so that you don't need to manually update the *placement* of page numbers on each *individual layout*. Keynote would truly be better than Powerpoint by a long shot but the lack of such a basic feature is a huge miss and major inconvenience when you just want all of your different slide layouts to have the page number automagically placed in the same spot. Or any other information for that matter that you want consistently across multiple pages...

Description

Easily create gorgeous presentations with Keynote, featuring powerful yet easy-to-use tools and dazzling effects that will make you a very hard act to follow. The Theme Chooser lets you skim through an impressive collection of over 40 Apple-designed themes. Easy-to-use tools let you add text, tables, charts, shapes, photos, and videos to slides—and bring it all to life with cinematic animations and transitions that look as though they were created by your own special effects team. Add live video to your slideshow and appear right on your slides in remote presentations, how-to videos, and lectures. Confidently present to your audience from anywhere, in person or virtually, and take turns controlling a presentation in multi-presenter slideshows. Collaborate with others at the same time • With real-time collaboration, your whole team can work together on a presentation at the same time on Mac, iPad, iPhone, and even on a PC • Share your document publicly or with specific people, see who’s currently in the presentation with you, and view other people’s cursors to follow their edits • See a list of recent changes in collaborative presentations, including when people join, comment, and make edits • Available for presentations stored in iCloud or in Box Get started quickly • Choose from over 40 Apple-designed themes to give your presentations a beautiful start • Use the slide navigator to quickly skim through your presentation, add new slides, and reorder slides • Get quick access to shapes, media, tables, charts, and sharing options • Import and edit Microsoft PowerPoint presentations • Quickly open password-protected presentations using Touch ID on supported Macs Create stunning presentations • Easily change slide layouts and backgrounds • Use the built-in camera or a connected device to add live video right on your slides • Engage your audience with interactive charts and chart animations • Enhance your presentations with a library of over 700 editable shapes • Quickly add your photos and videos from the Photos app using the Media Browser • Add an interactive image gallery to view a collection of photos • Easily remove image backgrounds • Use gorgeous preset styles to make your text, tables, shapes, and images look beautiful • Edit down to the pixel with rulers and alignment guides Cinema-quality animations • Beautiful cinematic slide transitions and impressive text and object animations • Magic Move effect effortlessly animates and morphs graphics • Emphasis builds let you add impact with one click • See live on-canvas previews as you animate your slides Present to your audience • Customizable presenter display with support for up to six displays • Rehearse a presentation with current slide, presenter notes, and timer all in one view • Present on an external display or projector, or stream wirelessly using AirPlay and Apple TV • Present over video conference and view presenter notes, current and upcoming slides, and slide navigation in a separate window • Use multi-presenter slideshows to let participants take turns controlling a shared presentation from their own device • Control your slideshow from iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch • Create self-running, interactive shows for kiosks and displays iCloud • Turn on iCloud so you can access and edit your presentations from your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and from a Mac or PC browser at iCloud.com • Keynote automatically saves your presentations as you make changes Share a copy of your work • Export presentations to Microsoft PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, movies, and image files • Use AirDrop to send your presentation to anyone nearby • Quickly and easily share a link to your work via Mail or Messages Some features may require Internet access; additional fees and terms may apply.