Reference

Use the Rayslides controls.

Use this page during editing or a live presentation.

Command-line options

rayslides [options] [deck.sld]

A deck path can appear before or after the options. Use -- before a path that starts with a hyphen.

Presentation controls

Quit Rayslides

A stray keypress in front of an audience must never end the show, so Rayslides has no quit key. Close the app either way:

• Run Quit Rayslides from the command palette. Press E to enter Studio if you are presenting, then press Cmd/Ctrl + K (or click Commands) and choose Quit Rayslides.
• Use your operating system or window manager: the window's close button, Cmd + Q on macOS, or whatever your desktop binds to closing a window.

Both paths run the same protection. Unsaved Studio edits are written to a unique *.edited.sld recovery copy first, and if that copy cannot be written the quit is cancelled and the deck stays open.

Go directly to a slide

Press Cmd/Ctrl + G in either presentation mode or Studio. The centered picker accepts digits only and shows the current slide and the deck's slide count; it does not preview or navigate while you type.

Press Enter to jump when the number is from 1 through the final slide. An empty, zero, or out-of-range value leaves the picker open with a bounds message. Press Esc or Cmd/Ctrl + G again to close it. Opening or cancelling preserves the current slide and playback state.

Save images and PDFs

The PDF contains one page for each logical slide. Rayslides uses the final reveal and morph state.

Showtime preflight

Open Studio's Commands menu and choose Showtime preflight. Showtime walks every base scene, reveal endpoint, cumulative morph scene, reusable definition, and deterministic poster-frame export graph without navigating, seeking, playing media, editing source, or changing history and selection.

Blockers include malformed source, unavailable presentation pixels, missing glyphs, and unavailable required services. Warnings identify reviewable conditions such as text overflow, off-canvas staging, non-portable paths, display mismatch, or an unmeasured Presenter rehearsal. Findings link to a slide/object or editable Library definition when possible.

Create portable show copies literal image, video, and custom-font dependencies beneath assets/, handles equal basenames deterministically, rewrites only the copied references in a readable .sld, then re-opens and preflights the copy. It refuses an existing destination and never edits the original. Presenter latency evidence contains only bounded counts, median/p95 values, and failures—never notes, private URLs, capabilities, sessions, or client identity.

Studio tools

Image and Video prompts include a Browse… file picker on every platform: the same Rayslides-drawn chooser used by Open deck… (Cmd/Ctrl-O), filtered to images or videos. Manual path entry remains available everywhere. Dropping a supported image or video over the Studio canvas creates that media item at the drop position. Saved decks use a relative path when possible.

SVG files use the Image path, including picker, replacement, fitting, reusable ownership, diagnostics, and export. The embedded vector subset does not render SVG <text>; convert type to paths first.

When an image or video is selected, Properties shows its effective IMAGE or VIDEO kind, its filename/path, and a separate ... replacement button. Click ..., or press Enter while Properties is visible, to choose a new source through the same picker and path policy without changing the object's geometry, ID, ordering, or other properties. On reusable instances, an amber R beside a local source override restores the inherited image or video.

Both media kinds share Stretch, Fit, and Fill controls. Fit preserves the complete picture inside the box; Fill preserves aspect ratio while cropping to cover it. FX and FY choose the normalized focal position from 0 to 1, and the panel shows natural pixels beside the authored box size.

Video Properties also has a Playback page for Auto, Loop, Mute, poster time and scrubbing, volume, and opacity. Poster changes select the still shown before playback; playback itself still begins at the start. Authored volume and mute are restored on slide entry, while presenter adjustments remain temporary for that visit. Amber R markers reset local source, Fit, focus, poster, volume, and playback-toggle overrides independently.

A live camera is a normal transformed video object: @box cam=0 video_size=1920x1080 poster_image=assets/camera-off.png x=520 y=180 w=880 h=560 fit=cover rotation=-12. It supports Fit/Fill, focal position, opacity, rotation, and morph geometry. The poster is used while stopped and in passive/export views. On macOS, run the bundled Rayslides.app so the system can request camera permission; after allowing the first prompt, press Play again if that initial start timed out. On Linux, identify the built-in or USB V4L2 device with v4l2-ctl --list-devices and prefer its stable /dev/v4l/by-id/... path; add cam_format=mjpeg to reach a mode the camera offers in MJPEG alone, commonly every mode above 640×480. See the live camera guide and tested rotated-feed screenshot.

If media cannot load, Studio keeps a selectable fallback box while the filename and ... replacement action remain available. It distinguishes missing or unreadable files, unsupported image data, missing ffmpeg/ffprobe, probe or codec failures, and poster decode failures. Out-of-range or recoverable poster choices receive amber warnings without losing their pixels, and silent videos are identified without being treated as broken. These diagnostics are Studio chrome and do not enter presentation or export pixels.

Properties also exposes text alignment, rectangle radius, line stroke/direction/arrow heads, and exact clockwise rotation=. Drag the connected handle above a selected text, shape, image, video, or line object to rotate it; hold Shift for 15° steps. Painted hit testing, bounds, smart-guide targets, reusable/local ownership, morphing, Showtime, screenshots, and PDF export use the same rotation.

Studio editing controls

While the Neovim overlay is open, it owns keyboard and mouse input. Studio and presentation shortcuts do not run until Neovim exits.

Move around the canvas

Phone and audience controls

Limits and defaults

Diagnostics

Press F3 or use --diagnostics. The display shows frame, rebuild, cache, deck, and window data.

The CLI also provides deterministic capture options. Run rayslides --help for the current list.