Deckset for Mac turns Markdown files into beautiful presentations in next to no time – and it works great with Ulysses! In the following tutorial, you’ll learn all you need to know to make both apps play together nicely. If you want, you can download Deckset’s trial version and a sample presentation for your first attempts.
Deckset generates your presentation from a Markdown file. When you write your notes with Ulysses, you can, of course, use Quick Export to output them as a Markdown file. The more comfortable way, however, is to use Ulysses to edit an existing Markdown file and point Deckset to it. That way, you can live-preview your presentation. Proceed as follows:
Attention: If you miss this step, Deckset will have problems to detect images and links in your presentation.
Once you have written some text in Ulysses, it will show up in a preview of your presentation in Deckset. Usually, it will take your text up to half a minute from input to showing up in the preview. If you want to see it instantly, hit the shortcut ⌘S (command-S) in Ulysses.
Especially when working on a small screen, you will appreciate Deckset’s handy preview feature. In Deckset, click the “Show Preview” button.
This will open a floating preview of your presentation. You can place it anywhere on your screen for reference, while you edit your presentation.
Now you can set off to creating your presentation:
You can of course also use images with your presentation. As a Markdown file can’t contain images itself, you will have to reference them. To do so, follow these steps:
(If your image lives on the web, you can of course also enter its URL here.)
Deckset comes with a number of different themes with handpicked fonts and colors for you to choose from.
And that’s all you need to know to create a beautiful presentation from a couple of bullet points and images. Deckset, however, has more fancy stuff to offer. Here are a few examples of its advanced layout options.
Split Slides. The modifiers left and right let you split a slide between image and text. Write the modifier in the field “Description” of Ulysses’ image popover.
Quote. Mark up a quote with >, its source with --.
Footers. To add a persistent footer to each slide of your presentation, insert the command footer: at the top of your file, followed by the text you want the footer to contain.
For further inspiration, open Deckset’s Help & Support page, or open the Help menu in the app.
Some of Deckset’s more advanced layout options require configuration commands enclosed in square brackets. In Ulysses, a square bracket will be automatically interpreted as a link. To prevent Ulysses from doing so, precede the square bracket with a backslash, like this:
\[.build-lists: true]
The command in this example can be used to make the list on a specific slide appear item by item.
Deckset allows adding presenter notes to your slides. These notes will not appear on your slides, but on the presenter’s display (with two screens connected) or when using rehearsal mode. In Ulysses, start a paragraph with ^ to treat it as a presenter note.
In Deckset, click the “Rehearse” button at the center top to show a preview of your presentation together with your presenter notes.
And as soon as you’re ready, and your audience is listening, click “Play” top left — and wow them with a beautiful presentation.
This article was last updated on January 17, 2020.
