Apple Keynote — Mac download

Keynote stores speaker notes inside each slide — not in a separate file, not in a sidebar that disappears. Add notes to Keynote slides and they stay with the deck on every device.

Rehearse with synced slides across Mac, iPad and iPhone

• Building decks that open on Mac, iPad and iPhone with real-time sync.
• Rehearsing with a customisable presenter display that shows current slide, next slide and your notes.
• Importing and editing Microsoft PowerPoint files without converting them first.
• Exporting to PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, movie files or image sequences.
• Presenting on iPad and annotating slides with Apple Pencil.
• Using Magic Move transitions between slides that share objects.
• Removing image backgrounds instantly with built-in masking tools.

Requires macOS 15.6, iCloud connection and Apple Vision Pro gear

• Version 15.3.1 requires macOS 15.6 — older Macs cannot run it.
• Collaboration through iCloud or Box needs an internet connection for shared decks.
• Apple Vision Pro rehearsal features need the headset and a compatible space setup.

Picking up Saturday’s iPad edits synced through iCloud

Monday morning. A pitch deck needs reworking before the afternoon call. You open Keynote and pick up where you left off — the file sat in iCloud all weekend, synced from the iPad edits you made on the sofa Saturday.

1. Scan the slide navigator on the left. The order works, but slide four feels flat. You swap the static chart for a live Numbers chart dropped straight onto the canvas.
2. Select the chart, open the Animate inspector, add a radial wipe build. The new transition from version 15.3.1 draws the eye inward — cleaner than the old dissolve you had there.
3. Two slides share the same product shot. You add a Magic Move transition. The image scales and repositions smoothly. No manual keyframing.
4. Open the presenter display and run through the deck once. Current slide on the left, notes below, next slide on the right. You tweak three bullet points directly in the notes field while rehearing.
5. Export a PowerPoint copy for the client who lives inside Office 365. Keynote writes the .pptx without complaint — fonts, builds, embedded video all land intact.
6. Drop the final deck into a shared Box folder. The notification pings your colleague in Berlin. She opens it on her iPad, adds two speaker notes in her own language, and they appear on your Mac within seconds.

PowerPoint’s deeper charting versus Keynote’s cleaner canvas

Keynote shares the presentation space with Microsoft PowerPoint and the web-based Canva. Each app pulls in a different direction.

• Microsoft PowerPoint — The heavy lifter. Deeper charting, more granular animation controls, wider enterprise adoption. But it feels cluttered next to Keynote's single-inspector layout. PowerPoint also lacks Magic Move; you build complex motion paths manually. If your world is pure Office 365, PowerPoint is the natural fit. If you want a lighter editor that still opens .pptx files cleanly, Keynote wins on simplicity.
• Canva — Browser-first, template-heavy, built for social graphics as much as slide decks. Canva excels at quick, branded designs with stock assets baked in. It falls short on presenter tools: no customisable presenter display, no rehearsal mode, no Apple Pencil annotation on iPad. Keynote feels like a presentation tool; Canva feels like a design tool that happens to export slides.

Keynote sits between them: more polished than Canva for actual presenting, less overwhelming than PowerPoint for daily deck work.

Fits together with

• Numbers — Charts and tables in a Keynote slide can link to a Numbers document. Edit the data in Numbers and the chart updates on the slide. No export, no re-import.
• Pages — Write a handout in Pages, drop a Keynote deck into a shared folder, and both documents stay in sync for the same team. The iWork trio shares formatting language and iCloud collaboration.
• macOS Continuity — Start a deck on Mac, sketch a diagram on iPad with Apple Pencil via Sidecar, and the drawing lands as a slide object. Universal Clipboard lets you copy a chart from Numbers on iPad and paste it straight onto a Mac slide.
• Spotlight and Quick Look — Press the spacebar on a .key file in Finder and the first slide appears instantly. No need to launch the app to check which deck is which.
• Box and iCloud — Shared folders work with both services. Publish a link from Keynote and anyone with a browser views the slides as a web page, animations included.

• New slide transitions and builds: shift, radial wipe and character blur.
• Replace images faster from the Content Hub inside presentations.
• Bug fixes and performance improvements.

• macOS 15.6 or later.
• Runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.