Here’s how to embed your shiny Keynote deck on Medium
and it’s bloody marvellous.
I don’t think anyone was expecting or predicting the update to the iWork suite of Apple apps that came today — I certainly didn’t read about it anywhere. Then again, minor updates to spreadsheet and other productivity apps aren’t usually much to write home about. They’re not interesting.
Allow me to blow your mind.
Here’s a random Keynote deck from a presentation on podcasting I did last year:
You can now embed Keynote files in Medium, in their full, gloriously-interactive form.
But it took me a good few minutes to figure out how to do it, so here’s a step-by-step guide below. Enjoy!
Prerequisites
- You need to have the new version of Keynote: 7.1. If you don’t have it, go to the App Store on your Mac and check for updates.
- Your Keynote file needs to be stored in iCloud. If you’re storing it locally, you can’t do this.
- Your Keynote needs to be accessible for “anyone with the link” (rather than specific people). I’ll show you how to do this in the instructions.
Steps
- Open your .key file in Apple Keynote, like so:
2. Click the Share menu, then Collaborate with others:
3. If your Keynote file isn’t already stored in iCloud, you’ll get a warning that it needs to be. Move to iCloud if you want to continue:
4. WARNING: The next screen isn’t at all obvious if you want to embed the presentation! Select Copy Link, open the advanced options and choose Anyone with the link and View only for the permission (we don’t want Joe Public editing our deck now, do we?).
5. iCloud will think for a while, then the loading screen will just disappear, leaving you with no confirmation of what’s happened. Nice one! Actually, what has happened is that you have a public link to the presentation on your clipboard.
6. Final step! Paste the link that was copied to your clipboard into your Medium post. Hit return, wait a second or so, and… voila! The embed appears in all its glory, with navigation controls, sharing and everything else. Badass!
