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. Many rooms still have VGA only, a Lightning to VGA adapter covers that.

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, including presenter controls.

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. Now there is no title bar, no tab strip, no dock, just 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. Move the pointer to the top edge to bring the title bar back when you're finished.

Method 2, The built-in viewer (a PDF, no network needed)

This is the reliable one. Export your deck to PDF before you leave, and you can present from the device with no Wi-Fi, no login and nothing to load.

Get the file onto the device

Any of these works:

• Import from your phone, the Files app has an Import button that opens the iOS document picker.
• Mount a folder, point XeOS at an iCloud Drive folder, a folder on your phone, or a USB drive, and open the file in place. See the drives guide.
• 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

Slide decks exported to PDF are usually 16:9, which matches most projectors and screens exactly. If your deck is 4:3, you'll see a band on each side, that's the deck's shape, not the app's. Set the viewer's zoom to fit the page width, and if the projector is adding its own border on top of that, check its picture-size setting (look for "Just Scan", "Screen Fit" or "1:1").

Presenting other file types

XeOS also previews Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly, useful when someone hands you a .pptx on a USB stick five minutes beforehand. It's a preview: fidelity is good enough to present from, but for anything where exact layout matters, PDF is safer.

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 message 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.