Create a presentation in Keynote on Mac
To create a new presentation, you first choose a theme to use as a starting point. Themes use coordinated fonts and colors for a unified look and often include placeholders that you can replace with your own content.
Create a presentation from a theme
To open Keynote, click the Keynote icon in the Dock, Launchpad, or the Applications folder.
If the theme chooser (shown below) doesn’t appear, click New Document in the bottom-left corner of the dialog. You can also choose File > New (from the File menu at the top of your screen).
Note: If you’d like the ability to format table and chart data using the conventions of another language, choose the language in the bottom-left corner before choosing a theme. See Format a presentation for another language.
In the theme chooser, browse the themes by category, then double-click the one that looks closest to what you want to create. To narrow the choices, click a category along the sidebar on the left.
Some themes aren’t downloaded to your computer until you choose them or open a presentation that uses one. If your connection is slow or you’re offline when this happens, placeholder images and slide backgrounds in the presentation may appear at a lower resolution until you’re online again or the theme finishes downloading.
To use a different slide layout for the first slide, click the Slide Layout button in the Format
sidebar on the right, then select a different layout.Each slide layout offers a different arrangement of text and images that you use as a starting point for your content.
To add your own content to the presentation, do any of the following:
Add a slide: Click
in the toolbar, then select a layout.Add text: Double-click placeholder text and type your own.
Add an image: Drag an image from your Mac or a webpage to a placeholder image or anywhere else on the slide, or click
in the lower-right corner of a placeholder image to replace it with your own.
Choose File > Save, enter a name, choose a location, then click Save.
Keynote automatically saves your changes as you work, so you don’t need to worry about saving your presentation manually. However, it’s a good idea to rename your presentation so you can easily find it the next time you want to work on it. You can change the name of the presentation or change where it’s saved at any time.
If iCloud Drive is set up on your Mac, Keynote saves the presentation to iCloud Drive by default.
To play the presentation, click
in the toolbar, then press the arrow keys to advance through the slides.To end the presentation, press the Esc (Escape) key. For more ways to show a presentation, see Play a presentation on your Mac.
To close the presentation, click the red close button in the top-left corner of the window.
Select a default theme for new presentations
You can set Keynote to always open a new presentation in a particular theme instead of from the theme chooser.
Choose Keynote > Settings (from the Keynote menu at the top of your screen).
Click General at the top of the window, then select “Use theme” in the For New Presentations controls.
The name that appears after “Use theme” is the currently selected theme.
Click the Change Theme button, select a theme, then click Choose.
To close the window, click the red close button in the upper-left corner.
After you change this setting, you can still open a new presentation with a different theme. Hold down the Option key, then choose File > New from Theme Chooser (from the File menu at the top of your screen).