PyPDFPresenter

A focused, offline PDF presenter with two-screen output and comfortable speaker notes.

Keep your slides on the audience screen and your notes, next page and timer on your own display. PyPDFPresenter is a small Python desktop application, built with PySide6 and PyMuPDF. No account or cloud service is required.

Both screenshots use Below the notes for the next-slide preview.

Features

• Separate presenter and full-screen audience windows.
• PDF notes on the left/right, or editable JSON notes for ordinary PDFs.
• Adjustable text size, protected reading mode and automatic note saving.
• Three layouts for the next slide and its notes.
• Synchronized laser pointer, black screen, timer and Clean View.
• Supported embedded MP4 video playback with optional auto-play.
• Background rendering and a persistent local image cache.
• German UI on German systems; English UI for all other system languages.

The current build is tested on Windows 11 with Python 3.13. The source uses cross-platform Qt APIs, but Linux and macOS have not yet been validated.

Try the demo

The repository includes an English demo in two formats:

• Slides only, paired with JSON speaker notes.
• Wide presenter PDF, with speaker notes on the right.

Run the demo from source:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python software/presenter.py --demo

The demo contains six slides with talking points and an original embedded MP4. The PDFs, JSON, Beamer TeX source and media are in examples. The TeX source has a switch for compiling with or without PDF speaker notes. See the manual compilation instructions.

Run from source

Requires Python 3.10 or newer. From the project directory:

python -m venv .venv

Activate the environment with .venv\Scripts\activate on Windows, or source .venv/bin/activate on Linux/macOS, then:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python software/presenter.py

The app opens an empty workspace. Choose Open PDF, or pass a file directly:

python software/presenter.py slides.pdf --speaker-notes slides.notes.json
python software/presenter.py examples/demo-presenter.pdf
python software/presenter.py --demo --language en

--language auto follows the system locale. --language de and --language en override it. The presentation content and your notes are never translated.

Present

1. Open a PDF and choose the audience display.
2. Use Automatic layout detection, or select the PDF notes position manually.
3. Load a JSON file if your deck has no PDF notes, or choose Create notes.
4. Press F5 or Start presentation. The button switches to Stop presentation.

The audience window shows only the slide region. Check the display selection with your projector connected before a talk.

Action	Control
Previous / next PDF page	Left / Right, Page Up / Page Down, Space
First / last page	Home / End
Start / stop presentation	F5
Hide audience window	Escape
Laser pointer	L, then move the mouse over the current/audience slide
Black screen	B
Play / pause supported video	V, or click its slide region
Reset video	Reset video button
Start / pause / reset timer	Timer buttons
Hide header and lower toolbar	Clean View; click again to restore

Navigation and laser controls stay on the left of the upper footer. The clock, timer controls and Clean View stay on the right. Controls keep their natural size in maximized windows. The lower footer contains the page selector, video controls and a compact preview layout menu.

Speaker notes

Choose PDF notes or Text / JSON in the header.

For text notes, Edit notes unlocks the current page's text; Finish editing protects it again. If no JSON is loaded, the same button becomes Create notes. Choose a file name once, then start writing. Selecting an existing file loads its content instead of clearing it.

Text changes save automatically after a short pause and immediately when editing ends or the app closes. The font size remains adjustable in reading mode and is also saved. If writing fails, the app reports the error and retains the text in memory. Presentation letter/arrow shortcuts are suspended while editing, so they do not consume your keystrokes.

{
  "version": 1,
  "pdf": "slides.pdf",
  "font_size": 22,
  "notes": {
    "1": "Welcome to the presentation.\n\nIntroduce the topic.",
    "2": "Explain the next step."
  }
}

Keys are physical PDF page numbers starting at 1, including individual builds/overlays. They are not printed slide labels. Missing entries appear empty; entries beyond the current PDF are preserved. The pdf field is a human-readable hint, not a strict binding. Files use UTF-8. Font size is 10-64 pt.

PDF notes remain rendered images, with no independent font adjustment. The JSON status and font control are hidden in PDF notes mode.

PDF layouts and video

Automatic detection uses the first page's aspect ratio: pages wider than 2.5:1 are treated as slide-left / notes-right; ordinary pages are shown in full. Use the manual selection for other layouts.

Embedded video support is limited to recognized Screen/Rendition annotations and some Movie annotations referencing a file specification. One video per page is displayed at its authored position on both windows. Moving to another page stops it; blacking out or stopping the audience window pauses it. RichMedia/Flash, PDF JavaScript, animated PDF content, clickable links and password-protected files are not supported.

Slides are rasterized to 1920 pixels wide and cached; this is intended for Full HD presentation rather than arbitrary PDF zooming. A page that has not finished rendering is briefly black. Reopen a PDF after editing its file. Caches use Qt's local cache directory; set PYPDFPRESENTER_CACHE_DIR to override it.

Build a Windows application

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python software/Build_exe.py

The script uses the active Python environment and can be called from any directory.

The portable folder is dist/PyPDFPresenter/. Keep its _internal directory with the executable. Launch PyPDFPresenter.exe, drag a PDF onto it, or run PyPDFPresenter.exe --demo. The spec includes the demo, icons, German Qt translations and license notices. It excludes a conflicting MSYS2 icuuc.dll on Windows so Qt uses the operating system's ICU library.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the local publishing checklist. The GitHub Actions workflow builds a Windows artifact. It does not publish a release automatically.

License

Application source, demo and screenshots: AGPL-3.0-only, see LICENSE. Dependencies keep their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. PyMuPDF is offered under AGPL or a separate commercial license, as described in its official license information.

PyPDFPresenter is an independent application.