Slide decks

Slide decks let you present a note as a sequence of slides directly in the preview pane. Write your content in markdown, add type: slide to the frontmatter, and the preview switches from a continuous document view to a pageable slide viewer with navigation controls.

Enabling the feature

Slide presentation mode is enabled by default. If you need to turn it off (or back on):

1. Open Settings (Cmd+,).

2. Go to General.

3. Toggle Enable Slides.

When disabled, documents with type: slide are rendered as normal continuous markdown previews and the slide-specific UI does not appear.

Making a slide deck

Add type: slide to your document's frontmatter:

---
title: My deck
type: slide
---

# First slide

Some content here.

---

# Second slide

More content.

Any note with type: slide in its frontmatter is treated as a slide deck by the preview pane.

Splitting slides

The document body is split into individual slides on every top-level hyphen-only rule (---, ----, and so on — three or more hyphens, no spaces). Each chunk of content between dividers becomes one slide.

A few details worth knowing:

• *** and ___ are not slide dividers — they render as an in-slide horizontal rule (<hr>).

• A --- inside a fenced code block (``` or ~~~) is not a thematic break and does not split slides.

• A setext-style heading underline (a --- on the line immediately below a heading) is parsed as a heading by the markdown engine, not a thematic break, so it does not split slides either.

• Leading, trailing, and consecutive --- dividers produce no empty slides — blank chunks are filtered out automatically.

The slide: config block

Add an optional nested slide: block to your frontmatter to control the deck's appearance:

---
title: My deck
type: slide
slide:
  ratio: 16:9      # 16:9 | 4:3 | auto
  overflow: scroll # scroll | clip  (ignored when ratio: auto)
---

ratio

Controls the aspect ratio of each slide:

overflow

Controls what happens when slide content is taller than the visible area:

Settings → Slides (app-level default)

The per-deck slide: block is optional. When it is absent or a field is missing, the app falls back to a cascade:

1. Per-deck frontmatter — the slide: block in the document, if present.

2. Settings → Slides — your app-level defaults (see below).

3. Hardcoded fallback — ratio: 16:9, overflow: scroll.

To set your preferred defaults for all decks:

1. Open Settings (Cmd+,).

2. Go to Slides.

3. Set Default Aspect Ratio and Default Overflow.

These defaults apply to any deck that does not specify its own slide: config block (or any field it leaves out). A deck that does include a slide: block always wins over the app default.

The slide viewer

When the preview pane shows a slide deck, the slide viewer appears in place of the normal markdown preview.

Navigation bar

A navigation bar sits at the bottom of the viewer:

• Previous / Next buttons (chevron arrows) — step through slides one at a time. The buttons are disabled at the first and last slide.

• Counter — shows the current position as n / total (1-based).

• View-mode toggle — switches between page-by-page mode and continuous-scroll mode (see below).

• Gear button — opens the Slide-settings dialog (see Slide-settings dialog).

Keyboard navigation

In page-by-page mode, the keyboard navigates between slides:

• Left arrow / Up arrow / Page Up — previous slide.

• Right arrow / Down arrow / Page Down / Space — next slide.

Keyboard navigation is suspended while focus is inside an editable control.

Page-by-page mode

The default mode. One slide is shown at a time; the previous/next buttons and arrow keys move between slides.

Continuous-scroll mode

All slides are stacked in a single scrollable column. Scrolling through the column updates the n / total counter to reflect the slide currently in view. Toggle to this mode by clicking the view-mode button in the navigation bar.

Both modes share the same current-slide position — switching from page mode to scroll mode keeps you on the same slide, and vice versa.

Slide-settings dialog

The Slide-settings dialog lets you edit the slide: frontmatter block without leaving the preview pane. It reads the current values from the document and writes them back to the frontmatter on save, updating both the editor buffer and the preview immediately.

Three ways to open it:

• Gear icon — in the preview pane's navigation bar.

• Command palette — open the palette (Cmd+K) and type "Slide settings".

• Keyboard shortcut — Cmd+Alt+P (default; rebindable in Settings → Shortcuts → "Slide settings").

The dialog presents two segmented controls:

• Aspect ratio — 16:9, 4:3, or Auto.

• Overflow — Scroll or Clip. Disabled (greyed out) when ratio is Auto.

Click Save to write the new values to the frontmatter. Click Cancel or press Escape to close without saving.

Editor + preview side by side

The most productive way to work on a slide deck is to have the editor on the left and the slide preview on the right, both showing the same note. This needs no slide-specific frame — it is the same edit-and-preview split that any document can use, because every Inbox leaf works on the same shared note pool and the two panes stay in sync.

1. Split the Space into two Inbox leaves. Use the frameset split controls to put two Inbox leaves side by side. (See Frame Components Reference for how to split a Space and swap a leaf's provider.)

2. Select the same note in both leaves from the Note Tray toolbar — both Inbox leaves read from the same shared note pool, so editing in one is reflected in the other.

3. Set one leaf to edit view mode. Use the leaf's toolbar to switch its view mode to edit.

4. Set the other leaf to preview view mode. Switch the second leaf's view mode to preview — for a type: slide note, this preview renders as the slide viewer.

As you type in the edit leaf, the slide preview updates live. No restart or manual refresh is needed.

For more on splitting a Space and the per-leaf view mode (edit / preview), see Frame Components Reference.

Preview themes

Slides use the same preview theme as the rest of the app — there is no separate slide-specific theme in the current version. To change the look of your slides, change the active preview theme.

See Preview themes for the full guide.

Related pages

• Frontmatter schema — schema file format and validation behavior.

• Frame Components Reference — frame component providers, including inbox and preview.

• Preview themes — change the visual look of the preview pane (and slides).