How to Present From Your iPhone or iPad When You Didn't Bring a Laptop

Set the display up first with the connection guide. In a meeting room you'll usually want USB-C to HDMI, or a Lightning Digital AV Adapter on older iPhones. Plenty of rooms are still VGA only, which a Lightning to VGA adapter covers.

Method 1: Google Slides (or PowerPoint on the web)

The browser in XeOS is a desktop browser, so slides.google.com behaves the way it does on a computer, presenter controls and all.

1. Open the Browser and go to slides.google.com (or office.com for PowerPoint).
2. Sign in. If you imported your passwords this takes seconds.
3. Open your deck and start the slideshow from Slides' own Present control.
4. Click the green button in the window's corner so the window itself goes full screen, which strips the title bar, tab strip and dock off it and leaves your slides on the projector.

Advance slides with a Bluetooth keyboard's arrow keys, with a mouse click, or by tapping your phone's screen as a trackpad. When you're done, move the pointer to the top edge to bring the title bar back.

Method 2: the built-in viewer, from a PDF, with no network

This is the reliable one. Export your deck to PDF before you leave and you can present from the device itself, without Wi-Fi or a sign-in and with nothing to load.

Get the file onto the device

Three ways in. The Files app has an Import button that opens the iOS document picker. You can mount a folder instead, pointing XeOS at iCloud Drive, a folder on your phone or a USB drive, and open the file where it already lives (the drives guide covers that). Or download it from email or the web, straight into Downloads.

Open it and go full screen

Double-click the PDF. It opens in the built-in viewer, which handles page navigation, zoom, a thumbnail sidebar, search and annotation.

Then click the green button. The slide fills the projector completely:

Page through with the arrow keys, Page Up / Page Down, a scroll wheel, or a swipe on the phone-as-trackpad.

Getting the slide to fill the frame

Decks exported to PDF are usually 16:9, which matches most projectors exactly. If yours is 4:3 you'll see a band down each side, and that's the deck's shape rather than anything the app is doing. Set the viewer's zoom to fit the page width. If the projector is adding its own border on top of that, go looking in its picture-size setting for "Just Scan", "Screen Fit" or "1:1".

Presenting other file types

XeOS previews Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly, which covers the case where someone hands you a .pptx on a USB stick five minutes before you start. It is a preview, though. Fidelity is good enough to present from, but if exact layout matters, PDF is the safer bet.

A short pre-flight checklist

• Deck exported to PDF and on the device.
• Adapter and a spare HDMI cable in the bag. Rooms often have the cable bolted down and the wrong end free.
• Multiport adapter if the talk is long, so the phone charges while it presents.
• Do Not Disturb on, so a notification doesn't appear on a four-metre screen.
• Auto-lock off, in iOS Settings › Display & Brightness.
• Content scale checked in Settings › Display. A room reads better slightly larger.