This Mac App Changed the Way I Give Presentations
Referring to notes on a laptop when you’re using it to present is always awkward. If you’re mirroring your displays, there’s no way to see your notes without showing them to your audience, which isn’t ideal. But using multiple displays is also pretty clunky — you have to move your mouse from one display to another every time you want to move to the next slide, which can be confusing.
There’s no perfect solution to this problem, but a Mac app called Beeno comes close. This free, open-source app from developer Uli Kaufmann puts your entire second display in a window on your primary display. The basic idea is that you’ll be able to see the presentation on your laptop without having to turn around and look at the display behind you. That means you can see the slides in front of you, instead of having to turn around to look at the presentation screen. It also means you can see and scroll through your notes and control the presentation, all on one screen.
Using the app is simple: you just need to launch it when you have two displays connected. You’ll need to grant the appropriate permissions before everything starts working, and a window on your primary display will automatically pop up, showing you everything on the secondary display. The window is scalable, meaning you can resize it to fit your notes or whatever else you need to refer to during your presentation. If you need to switch displays in the window, you can right-click on the menu bar and select a different one.
I’ve been experimenting with Beeno for a few weeks now and it works pretty well – I don’t think I’ll ever have to awkwardly look back during a presentation again.