Exporting

Slides

PDF

Exporting to PDF, PPTX, or PNG relies on Playwright for rendering. You will therefore need to install playwright-chromium to use this feature. If you are exporting within a CI environment, the playwright CI guide can be helpful.

1. Install playwright-chromium:

$ npm i -D playwright-chromium

2. Now export your slides to PDF using the following command:

$ slidev export

After a few seconds, your slides will be ready at ./slides-export.pdf.

PNGs and Markdown

When passing in the --format png option, Slidev will export PNG images for each slide instead of a PDF:

$ slidev export --format png

You can also compile a markdown file composed of compiled png using --format md:

$ slidev export --format md

PPTX (Microsoft PowerPoint)

Slidev can also export your slides as a PPTX file:

$ slidev export --format pptx

Note that all the slides in the PPTX file will be exported as images, so the text will not be selectable. Presenter notes will be conveyed into the PPTX file on a per-slide basis.

In this mode, the --with-clicks option is enabled by default. To disable it, use --with-clicks false.

Dark mode

In case you want to export your slides using the dark version of the theme, use the --dark option:

$ slidev export --dark

Export Clicks Steps

Available since v0.21

By default, Slidev exports one page per slide with clicks animations disabled. If you want to export slides with multiple steps into multiple pages, pass the --with-clicks option:

$ slidev export --with-clicks

PDF outline

Available since v0.36.10

You can generate the PDF outline by passing the --with-toc option:

$ slidev export --with-toc

Output filename

You can specify the output filename with the --output option:

$ slidev export --output my-pdf-export

Or in the frontmatter configuration:

---
exportFilename: my-pdf-export
---

Export a range of slides

By default, all slides in the presentation are exported. If you want to export a specific slide or a range of slides you can set the --range option and specify which slides you would like to export:

$ slidev export --range 1,6-8,10

This option accepts both specific slide numbers and ranges.

The example above would export slides 1,6,7,8 and 10.

Multiple entries

You can also export multiple slides at once:

$ slidev export slides1.md slides2.md

Or

$ slidev export *.md

In this case, each input file will generate its own PDF file.

Presenter notes

Available since v0.36.8

Export only the presenter notes (the last comment block for each slide) into a text document in PDF:

$ slidev export-notes

This command also accepts multiple entries like for the export command

Single-Page Application (SPA)

See Static Hosting.

Exportable Docker Image

To support the export feature, there is a docker image (maintained by @tangramor) with tag playwright. Run following command in your work folder:

docker run --name slidev --rm -it \
    -v ${PWD}:/slidev \
    -p 3030:3030 \
    -e NPM_MIRROR="https://registry.npmmirror.com" \
    tangramor/slidev:playwright

Then you can use the export feature like the following under your work folder:

docker exec -i slidev npx slidev export --timeout 2m --output slides.pdf

Troubleshooting

Timeouts

For big presentations you might want to increase the Playwright timeout with --timeout:

$ slidev export --timeout 60000

Wait

Some parts of your slides may require a longer time to render. You can use the --wait option to have an extra delay before exporting:

$ slidev export --wait 10000

There is also a --wait-until option to wait for a state before exporting each slide. If you keep encountering timeout issues, you can try setting this option:

$ slidev export --wait-until none

Possible values:

• 'networkidle' - (default) consider operation to be finished when there are no network connections for at least 500 ms. This is the safest, but may cause timeouts.
• 'domcontentloaded' - consider operation to be finished when the DOMContentLoaded event is fired.
• 'load' - consider operation to be finished when the load event is fired.
• 'none' - do not wait for any event.

WARNING

When specifying values other than 'networkidle', please make sure the printed slides are complete and correct. If some contents are missing, you may need to use the --wait option.

Executable path

Chromium may miss some features like codecs that are required to decode some videos. You can set the browser executable path for Playwright to your Chrome or Edge using --executable-path:

$ slidev export --executable-path [path_to_chromium]