Slides: Live Editing and Cursor-Sync

Feature requests
1

Current Limitation

The native Slides plugin currently forces a full-screen overlay, making it impossible to interact with the editor or other notes during a presentation. This lock-in is a major disadvantage, especially in educational settings: I can’t do anything during the presentation; I have no chance for something like presentation notes like in powerpoint’s Presentation Mode, nor can change a single letter without exiting the presentation. I know that Slides Extended has this feature - but it is not compatible with other Obsidian plugins (in my case: rendering written music with a special plugin within the presentation), so I’d love to work with the official slides plugin.

Proposed Solutions

  1. Detached Presentation Window

    Instead of an inescapable full-screen mode, the presentation should be launchable in a separate window. This allows the user to project the slides on a second screen while keeping the Obsidian editor functional on the primary screen.

  2. Cursor-Based Slide Focus

    Introduce an option where the presentation window automatically follows the editor’s cursor. The slide containing the cursor is the one being projected. This enables:

    • Filling in blanks (cloze texts) live.

    • Recording student responses directly into the slide during the lecture.

  3. Delayed Re-rendering

    To ensure a smooth experience, the slide should re-render only after a 2-second pause in cursor movement or typing. This prevents distracting visual glitches during the live input process.

This would allow for example live-filling of cloze texts or recording student responses directly during a lecture.

1 Like
2

this makes sense to me. the useful part is less “slides need more features” and more “the source note and the presentation surface shouldn’t become two separate workflows.”

the cursor-sync part seems especially important for teaching/live demo use: if you notice a typo or need to adjust the next beat, you should be able to fix the markdown without tearing down the presentation state.

one question: would your ideal version keep the editor and presentation as two linked panes inside Obsidian, or would a separate pop-out/presenter window be enough as long as it follows the active heading/slide?

3

I guess a a separate pop-out/presenter window would be enough for my needs; for presentations I could always extend the screen and just move it there

4

would love to see this added