Keynote Reviews

Lifelong fan of this app here, all the way back to 1.0. It’s clearly still the ultimate piece of software of its kind, but the iPad UI needs to grow up. Limiting the inspector to popovers on everything except the 12.9” iPad Pro is, at this point in time, lazy. The area a slide would be afforded on an 11” iPad Pro if the persistent inspector panel were to its right is more than sufficient already. Compound this with the navigator’s ability to hide dynamically as well as the fact that zooming is so much easier on iPadOS than Mac, and you realize that even smaller iPads might be ok with this approach. Additionally, more advanced and adaptive ways of surfacing inspector-like UIs have evolved in both third and first party apps. A lot of screen real estate would be available to a horizontal version of the inspector, given that slides gravitate heavily toward 16:9 dimensions, while iPads display them on a 4:3 screen and move that ratio even further away from 16:9 due to the space needed for the navigator.

I’m trying to make lectures for my class and the Apple Pencil works well with this app. As I present my presentation I add annotations so I can do our math problems. Unfortunately the ‘done’ button is near where my right hand will rest while making annotations. This clears the screen in the middle of the annotations, making me start over. Also, there is no option to keep the annotations once you are done with the presentations. I like making the slides in this app better than PP, but I can keep the annotations in PP and not have to start over since there isn’t a done button in PP. the pencil doesnt work as well (switching colors brings down a drop down menu in PP where it appears at the bottom in this app) but starting over because I bumped the button is infuriating. I managed to waste a good amount of time and have nothing to show for it. If it’s possible to move the colors and done button, that would be great but I haven’t found anything about it so far.

As others have stated, dragging to select would be so much more efficient. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to select and reselect because of multiple layers of objects...and it just never seems to work properly. I instinctively keep trying to use my Apple Pencil to work with, only to scribble all over my work. Also, why is it that when I group objects together, I can’t link them? For example, I have font on top of a shape and want to link them both to another slide, so I grouped them. I have to link both the text and the shape in order for this to work? I’ve probably spent double the time on my project than necessary if Keynote just offered basic functions. It’s also incredibly frustrating that when I zoom, the toolbar blocks the top of my slide completely, so the only way I’m able to navigate small shapes at the top of my slide is to be zoomed out...but I can’t use my Apple Pencil to navigate the elements of my slide in place of my fingers!

I have 3 very different businesses. I have used this app for years! It is the most flexible presentation software I have ever found! I have always had to use both Microsoft and Apple platforms. I finally committed to going 100% Apple because of 2 major strengths; Ease of Use and Flexibility! In this app you will be able to create a beautiful professional looking presentation in minutes versus the days you would spend in any other program. This saves my businesses time and money! While at the same time making me money because the final product is visually powerful. Always gets my point across with stunning clarity. I highly recommend this product whether you are a first time user or a seasoned professional. You are only limited by your own imagination!

I use this app constantly and for most graphics needs (not just presentations- although this app blows PowerPoint away in that regard as well). I have the entire Adobe Creative Cloud library of software and use it for some detailed projects, but for about 85% of may needs, I can create graphic solutions in much less time, with much greater ease (this app is not cluttered like Adobe software tends to be), and with same results.

Apple should expand this app functionality and promote it much more as a wonderful graphics program (and some simple animations) that go far beyond just presentations. It is even useful in authoring personal books and picture-based journeys.

Best app ever.

There’s a lot of great things about Keynote, but let’s be honest, Apple, you’ve really really dropped the rotate feature on Keynote for iPad. In theory, it makes sense, use two fingers to rotate the object to the direction you want and yes I know how Apple loves multi touch features. However, this one is down right annoying!! It takes you waaaaaaay longer to rotate something than it needs too. I have been trying to rotate an image for 20 minutes! I just can’t grab the image to rotate it. A lot of times the same thing happens when you want to move an object too. It’s like Keynote doesn’t recognize the fact you’re actually trying to interact with it. So please, please, please add a rotate button to the images and objects you’re working with because it’s very frustrating when you’re trying to do a 1 second thing and it takes literally 20 minutes.

Apple why did you break the remote feature in this app for the best device ever by size ( small ) iPhone 5s. I do not have an SE. I am able to link to newer iPhones without issue. However the iPhone 5s will not see a remote to link to it nor will it display itself on a device you are linking it to. However if you cancel trying to link the device running the presentation you are attempting to link to crashes every time. So something is being done. It is just blocked. Please reenable remote this app feature to the iPhone 5s.

I had to delete Keynote on my iPhone 5s and redownload it. Works perfectly now.

this app is such a powerful tool for many things not just presentations. Things would be a lot better if your text bounding box didn’t have padding, it would be better if it went around the lettering like a vector software. Would also love to see more unique animations, and would love to have even more deep control over them. Would also love to see a dead simple tool to make ground up animations, if anyone can pull that off it would be you guys. Also, we really hope we get the ability to export a video with a transparent background on the iOS version.

I’m a college student and this app is my go-to when it comes to editing my powerpoints during lectures. However, I wish it had more utensils to work with. Mainly just a highlighter (that appears behind the text rather than over the text). Also, it would be nice have folders that you can sort the files into. I use the tabs for now, but I feel like it would be easier to arrange them into folders. Lastly, I would like to suggest being able to star certain slides on the powerpoints. This will help when going back to important slides or knowing which slides I need to study a bit more.

Worked this app on my iPhone With no problem. The only issue here is that Keynote won’t slow you to edit after viewing. You would need to completely shut down Keynote , reopen it and go from there. Another thing also is that when sharing with other people to add/edit, collaboration of work flow is not smooth. You can’t simultaneously work on the same project with other people at same time which is a bit frustrating because the changes are not immediate and can get a bit confusing on what is added/edited it.

I love using this app and do so regularly. It’s great that I can now use special formatting in the presenter notes, such as bold, italics, different colors of text, etc. I do that because these are easy-to-see symbolic reminders of things I need to do during a presentation. What’s frustrating, however, is that, when using my iPad as the remote for my iPhone for a presentation, all of that special formatting disappears and the text is generic! All of my symbolic reminders are then useless. So, what’s the point of being able to use these features when creating the presenter notes if they’re not going to be visible when actually giving a presentation?

I love this app, use it all the time, but one major drawback is that when you play a presentation it automatically goes to full screen with no option of playing in a window. Due to the lockdown, I’m using Zoom for showing presentations and playing this app over Zoom is really difficult without an in-window play option - is there any way that you can add this feature? PowerPoint has it, surely you don’t want Microsoft to better you? 😜 please make it a feature - it’ll make my quarantined working from home so much easier! Thank you! 🙏🏼

this app has the ability to be the most important app I use. However, it takes about three times as long to use it as it should. Photos will not insert properly into my presentations. I’m using an iPad and iPad Pro and both of them have the same problem. When I go to insert a photo nothing happens. I have to click through other pages and come back to try again, or crash my ipad to try and get it to refresh. It’s actually a nightmare of wasted time and I’m ready to pay for a different program that hopefully doesn’t have this MAJOR glitch.

Keynote was really simple to use and I barley had to have any instructions to know how to use it! Great for making fun little presentations for class, business, and whatever else you would like! I am a big fan of the fun and cool option they have for transitions between slides, it adds a fun little twist to presentations! When given the choice of what app to use to present I definitely go for this app! Totally reccomend downloading! I would honestly give this fours stars and a half but I like the satisfaction of five stars :)

I’m so used to apple products being so intuitive, yet this version of this app is the worst. Nothing seems in the correct place. The insert text box is in with the shapes? So, I hunt for a long time before I find it because who would look there. The “more” tab is just everything but the kitchen sink. And things seem grouped in ways that don’t feel coherent. There should have been a lot more thought put into the organization of menus. And I think they should be somewhat comparable to where they are located with the desktop program. I also seem to constantly click the option menu and erase something I’ve just done.

If I’m going to be completely honest, I was completely in love with Keynote ! However, recently I’ve been seeing glitches happen. Here are some:

1. It normally takes at least 2+ minutes to put jut one photo in. It shows that I tried to put the photo in but I just have to keep exiting out of it and doing it all over again. I’ve tried rebooting it but it never ends up working out in the end.

2. I also would make it so that we can have the full screen
background thing like it used to have. I really miss that part of this app and I’ve just been having to duplicate the presentations and then deleting each slide over and over again.

3. I think it would be really helpful to be able to do “Instant Alpha” but on videos.

Other than that, it’s an amazing app and there’s no other problems I’ve encountered.

This might be my very first review on a product ever, but i had to because i seriously appreciate you guys stepping up your game like that. I like to be very visual when i teach and i make presentations for videos and math tutorials for my business, and i feel like a whole new set of possibilities has presented itself.

Thank you, this app people! You’re clearly not getting the credit you deserve in these reviews (for some freakin reason 🙄 like, can i see the presentation app that you made??), but ignore the haters, just keep doing you!

Use my iPad for most things, including creating my digital planners, and I sort of regret finally updating my iPad 6th generation to the iOS 14 so soon. Keynotes, among many other apps, seem to randomly close out and won’t open for anywhere from a few minutes or longer.
There’s nothing wrong with my 6 gen, other than it’s roughly in its second year of age as I purchased it as soon as it dropped. Not a scratch, dent, smudge, nothing. It’s been in its case since it came home with me. Can’t possibly be from the treatment of the hardware. 🤦🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️
Very annoying.

I have ruined and spent hours trying to do what i use to do in much shorter periods of time. All because now the pencil is just a writing tool. Where i could move small items before using my pencil so I could see what I was doing I am now I’m moving things below because my fingers are too large to see what I’ve selected. Give us the option to use our pencil as a writing instrument or as a tool for placement and precision. Seriously. I think we are smart enough to know how we want to use our over priced Apple Pencil. disappointed with the update, wishing I hadn’t hit that button. You got 2 stars because I still enjoy this app but as mentioned the update stinks.

When I first stared using this app it was perfect; so I purchased it. Since then it has gotten progressively worse! Every time they update it..about three hundred times seems like..it gets worse.
It hangs, it can’t fit the screen the way it use to. Also it doesn’t place the object on the canvas properly most times.
I know it only cost $5.00..I think.. but it was worth more when I first bought.
There are no ads when you buy it. It was a great app two years ago, now it’s almost worthless. It is better than most PPP’s out there but it’s acting up so bad I’m forced to look for another; sorry guys.🙂

I have observed that many folks view this app as simply an office tool. Indeed, I have made several conventional presentations as an Infection Control Specialist, both before retirement and for Home School children. But this app is so much more! Think of this app as a painters palette upon which you can gather together many creative elements into a work of art. What are these elements? They might include, photographs, video, music and sound effects, animation, graphic objects, and writing. Each element can interact with one another, for example merge a still photo with an animation. Or perhaps, a video can take center stage surrounded by animation and text. Perhaps, you have the video look like it is playing on a TV set to outdoor movie screen. Or perhaps combine an animation with a sound effect, or combine a musical background with original artwork. Move and time each element to demonstrate your creativity. When your living work of art is complete, you can convert it all to a video which you can share.

Hello Apple,
I love these apps for what they offer. I am a University student and use iCloud, Numbers, this app, and Pages. There is a lot of potential in these apps. My issue with these apps however is the size. The university I attend gives us iPads as part of our education. The storage size is the standard 16gb which is fine. If I add in these Apple office apps it takes almost a full 1 gigabyte away from me that I could use part of for other apps I need in school. I understand that developing apps is not easy but if you can make great electronics then surely you could modify and slim these apps down so they don’t take up so much space.
My request is for these apps to be made smaller if possible.
Thank you :)

Keynote is solid. But, it could be so much better with very little imagination and effort (especially for the soon-to-be trillion-dollar company that makes the iPad Pro!).

For example, this app needs drag to select.

Long touch at a particular spot to activate selection mode and bring up crosshairs. Drag the finger, during which a dotted rectangle dynamically follows to show you what you are selecting. Lift finger, and all items touching the rectangle have been selected. Upon lifting finger, show popover action menu.

This is pretty straightforward, and countless other apps already do it.

The current approach of selecting one item at a time while keeping another finger on an "anchor" item is silly and slow for slides that have many graphical objects.

this app developers need to work with OmniGraffle for a day. I get it that this app probably doesn't want to be as intricate as OmniGraffle with multitouch, but still.... there are some basic things (like drag to select) that could be done so much more intuitively and creatively to truly capture the magic of touch interface.

THANK YOU APPLE for adding support for action builds. This is a really solid presentation app, and I’m really happy to see how far the iOS version of this app has gotten since the early days.

If there’s one thing I’d really like to have, I’d like an option to keep a copy of my presentation slides with annotations while presenting. It’s really useful to have when teaching other people and highlighting certain things during the presentation. I believe Powerpoint has this feature, and it would be really nice to have this on this app.

“Can’t connect with helper applications” same is happening with Pages....how can we use Keynote to work if it does not work, and there is no support??? Unbelievable and Unacceptable

Update 3/12 - after a rather long wait with apple support, they were able to help.....for all of you....google drive doc are causing problems while tryng to open pages or this app documents.....solution: move doc from google drive to iCloud and problem solve...Apple and Google will have to find out what is happening there...increase rating to 3 stars...might update in the future...

this app is pretty good. While it may not have features other presentation software has, it does have some individual characteristics. The animations are original and fun. The font selection is pretty good. The Magic Move features works so well. I don’t understand why people get so mad about no selection feature. If you’re that desperate, log onto iCloud on a computer, and go to this app. If you shared your presentations on iCloud, they should be there. You can select on computers. Overall, this app is really cool, and definitely beats out Slides and can compete with PowerPoint.