Keynote

Create and manage Keynote themes on Mac

If you add or edit a presentation’s slide layouts, you can save those changes as a theme to use again in other slideshows. Creating your own theme can be as simple as adding your company logo to an existing theme, or you can design a completely new theme. To learn more about creating and editing slide layouts, see Add and edit slide layouts.

You can add your custom themes to the theme chooser, save them as a file to share with others, and use them in Keynote on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Custom themes that you create on your Mac are grouped in the My Themes category of the theme chooser and are shared across all your devices.

If you’re signed in to the same Apple Account on all your devices and have iCloud Drive turned on when you save a custom theme, it’s available on all your devices (but not in Keynote for iCloud).

Only changes to slide layouts are saved to a new theme.

With the presentation open, choose File > Save Theme (from the File menu at the top of your screen).
Click an option:
- Add to Theme Chooser: Type a name for the theme, then click Choose.
- Save: Type a name for the theme, then choose where you want to save it.
  If you want to email the theme to others, save it to your computer. You can attach the theme file to an email message.

You can install a custom theme that you received as an attachment by adding it to the theme chooser in Keynote.

Double-click the theme file (it has the filename extension .kth), then click Add to Theme Chooser.

Note: The theme is already installed on all your devices and available in the My Themes category of the theme chooser if you choose Add to Theme Chooser when you create the theme (and were using iCloud Drive while signed in to the same Apple Account).

You can set Keynote to always open a new presentation from the same theme instead of from the theme chooser. Choose Keynote > Settings (from the Keynote menu at the top of your screen). In the General pane, select “Use theme,” then click Change Theme to select a theme.

Go to the Keynote app on your Mac.
Choose File > New (from the File menu at the top of your screen), then double-click the theme you want to use as the basis for a new theme.
Custom themes appear in the My Themes category in the theme chooser. If you want to use a custom theme that doesn’t appear there, you must first install the custom theme (see the instructions above).
Make your changes, choose File > Save Theme, then choose an option to save the presentation as a new theme.

The edited theme is saved as a new version. You can rename the new version and delete the first version if you don’t want to keep it.

If you’re signed in to the same Apple Account on all your devices and have iCloud Drive turned on, deleting a custom theme deletes it from all your devices.

Go to the Keynote app on your Mac.
In the theme chooser, Control-click the theme name, then choose Rename or Delete.
If you’re renaming, type a new name, then press Return.
Custom themes always appear in the My Themes category in the theme chooser, in the order in which they were added. You can’t rearrange them.

Helpful?

Create and manage Keynote themes on Mac

Save a presentation as a theme

Install a theme from another source on your Mac

Edit a custom theme

Rename or delete a custom theme