Use bidirectional text in Keynote on Mac

Keynote supports bidirectional text, so you can enter and edit text written from left to right (such as in English or Chinese) and from right to left (such as in Arabic or Hebrew) in the same presentation. To use bidirectional text, you must have at least one right-to-left language in your device’s preferred language list. To learn more, see Set up a keyboard or other input source for another language.

Although you can use any Keynote themes to create a bidirectional presentation, you can use themes designed specifically for another language. To see these themes, you must set the primary language of your Mac to that language. Choose Apple menu > System Settings, click General in the sidebar, then click Language & Region. (You may need to scroll down.) Drag a preferred language to make it the primary language for your Mac. When you create a new presentation, you see templates for that language.

Change paragraph text direction

Select text.
In the Format sidebar, click the Text tab.
In the Alignment section, click .
The insertion point moves to the other side of the object, and the paragraph direction changes.
Enter text, then press Return at the end of the paragraph.
The next paragraph continues in the same direction. To change its direction, click .

If you select multiple paragraphs with different text directions and then click , the paragraphs are formatted to match the first paragraph in the selection.

If you don’t see , you may not have a right-to-left language in your computer’s preferred language list. To add a language to your preferred language list, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.) Go to Text Input, click Edit, click , then select a language.

Helpful?

Keynote User Guide for Mac

Use bidirectional text in Keynote on Mac

Change paragraph text direction