Keyboard Shortcuts

Every key tap listens for, in the audience view, the presenter view, and the tap dev terminal.

Keys are ignored while an input, textarea, select, or contenteditable element has focus.

Press ? in the audience view or the presenter view to show the shortcuts for that view without leaving the deck.

Audience View

The main presentation window, at http://localhost:3000.

Navigation

Shortcut	Action
Right, Down, Space, Enter, PageDown	Next fragment or step, then next slide
Left, Up, Backspace, PageUp	Previous fragment or step, then previous slide
Home	First slide
End	Last slide

Fragments and steps

On a slide with fragments or a step-driven component, an advance key moves through those first and only then moves to the next slide. A slide with two <!-- pause --> markers takes two presses before it advances.

View controls

Shortcut	Action
S	Open the presenter view in a new window
O	Toggle the slide overview
T	Cycle to the next theme
F	Toggle fullscreen
?	Show or hide the list of shortcuts
Esc	Blur a focused input, or close the overview or the list of shortcuts, or exit fullscreen

Navigation keys are ignored while an input, textarea, select, or contenteditable element inside a slide has focus, so a form on a slide can be typed into. Escape blurs that element and gives the clicker back; it does not also close the overview or leave fullscreen on that same press.

In the overview, arrow keys move the selection and Enter jumps to the selected slide. Other shortcuts are ignored while the overview is open.

While the list of shortcuts is open, only ? and Esc work, and both close it. A click outside the list also closes it.

T cycles through every built-in theme without touching the deck's frontmatter. To force one theme for a link or a recording, add ?theme=<slug> to the URL instead.

The screen staying awake

Both the audience view and the presenter view ask the device to keep the screen on while a deck is open, and ask again each time the page becomes visible, since a browser drops the lock on a tab switch or a lock screen.

The Screen Wake Lock API is only available in a secure context, so this works over https and on localhost. A phone opening a tap dev server by LAN address over plain http has no wake lock available, and its screen dims on its own schedule.

The mouse pointer

While the deck is fullscreen, the pointer hides after 2.5 seconds without movement and reappears on the next move, click or scroll. Presenting on a TV or a projector therefore needs nothing switched on beforehand, and pointing at something on a slide still works.

Outside fullscreen the pointer is left alone, so it never vanishes while you are working on a deck in a window.

Touch gestures

On a phone or a tablet, where there is no keyboard, the audience view answers to two gestures.

Gesture	Action
Swipe left	Next fragment or step, then next slide
Swipe right	Previous fragment or step, then previous slide
Two-finger tap	Toggle the slide overview

A swipe must travel at least 50 px, be more horizontal than vertical, and finish within 800 ms, so scrolling a long slide and tapping a link both still work. In the overview, tap a slide to jump to it, or tap outside the grid to close it.

A swipe raises a small pill at the bottom of the screen with the new slide number, or "First slide" / "Last slide" when there is nowhere further to go. A deck with no transition changes instantly, so without it a swipe can look like nothing happened.

Only a drag that is clearly horizontal is taken from the browser, and only once it is clearly horizontal, so the page cannot scroll under the finger mid-swipe. Vertical panning and pinch-zoom stay with the browser. That is also why a pinch does not open the overview: the browser owns that gesture.

Presenter View

The window at http://localhost:3000/presenter, or opened with S.

Shortcut	Action
Right, Down, Space, Enter, PageDown	Next fragment or step, then next slide
Left, Up, Backspace, PageUp	Previous fragment or step, then previous slide
Home	First slide
End	Last slide
R	Reset the timer
-	Make the speaker notes smaller
=	Make the speaker notes larger
?	Show or hide the list of shortcuts
Esc	Close the list of shortcuts

The speaker notes size is remembered in this browser.

Navigation in the presenter view is broadcast to every connected audience view, and the other way round.

Dev Server Terminal

The tap dev terminal interface, not the browser.

Shortcut	Action
A	Open the slide builder and append a new slide
O	Open the audience view in your browser
P	Open the presenter view in your browser
R	Trigger a manual reload
T	Open the theme picker
E	Export the deck to PDF
U	Start or stop a public tunnel, and show its URL and QR code
I	Open the AI image generator (needs GEMINI_API_KEY)
Q, Ctrl+C	Stop the dev server

O means different things in the two places: in this terminal it opens the browser, in the browser it opens the slide overview. The help line at the bottom of the terminal reminds you that ? in the browser lists the browser's own shortcuts.

In the theme picker, Up/K and Down/J move the selection, Enter applies the theme to every connected browser and writes it into the deck's frontmatter, and Esc or Q closes the picker without changing anything.

URL Parameters

Not keyboard shortcuts, but the same job from a link or a script.

Parameter	Effect
?theme=<slug>	Render with that theme instead of the deck's own
?present=true	Audience mode: a failing component or slide degrades to its fallback content plus a small component error chip, instead of a full error card
?debug=true	Force the full error card on any window, including a fullscreen or ?present=true one
?print=true	Print mode: every fragment and step at its final state, no animation, no websocket
?capture=true	Capture mode: no websocket, no connection badge, and the requested step or fragment rendered settled
?live=true	With capture=true, keeps animations and timers running instead of settling
?step=<k>	Load the slide at presenter step k, clamped to the slide's own maximum
?fragment=<k>	Load the slide with fragments revealed through index k, clamped
#<n>	The URL hash selects the slide, by one-based slide number (#5)

?step= and ?fragment= are read once at load and never again, so normal clicker navigation is unaffected. They are also removed from the address bar on the first navigation, so a link you share after clicking around does not pin the reader to the step you started on. Every other query parameter stays. tap export images --step and --fragment use them, together with ?capture=true.

?capture=true exists for a stepped or fragment screenshot. Such a capture renders the requested presenter state rather than the deck's final state, but it runs against a temporary server with no websocket route, so a connect attempt would retry forever and bake a "Reconnecting" badge into the image. Capture mode drops the websocket and the badge.

By default a capture is also settled: the requested step or fragment is shown with animations and timers finished, so the image is that state's resting appearance rather than a frame caught partway toward it. Unlike print mode, settling does not move the step or the fragment; it only stops things animating toward it.

?live=true, which tap export images --wait adds, turns the settling off and leaves the page genuinely live. The wait it pairs with starts once the page is ready, not at navigation, so it catches an animation that runs on a timer or longer than the readiness waits.

tap export images sets both for you. Print mode never needs either, since it already skips the websocket and shows the final state.

The keyboard reference for these states is in Print mode.

A fullscreen window behaves like ?present=true for error display, without needing the parameter. See Where the error card shows.

See Also

• Presenter Mode - Full presenter mode guide with cross-device setup
• Animations & Transitions - Configure fragments and transitions
• Themes - The theme list and how to pick one