How to keep presenter notes private on a Mac

Can you keep presenter notes private with one Mac?

Yes. Share the slides' window while keeping notes in a different window or app. A second monitor is optional. On a laptop, the important boundary is the source your meeting app captures, not how much room you have to arrange windows.

Putting notes behind your slides only hides them from your eyes for the moment. A full-desktop share can reveal them when you switch apps or leave the slideshow. Choose and test the slide window before the audience joins.

Which Keynote window should you share?

Share the slideshow window, not the presenter display. Apple's Play in Window mode creates separate windows for slides and presenter controls, so one Mac can show both locally. The picker can list similar-looking windows; select the slide content and verify it from the receiving side.

Apple also documents a setting that makes the presenter display available to other apps. Do not treat the word presenter as a privacy guarantee. The selected window and the received image are what matter.

• Apple: play a Keynote presentation in a window

Where to keep your notes

Keep notes and slides apart

How do you keep a separate notes app out of Privacy Screen?

Mark the notes app private and leave the slide app shared. If notes are in another window of the slide app, use Hide a window for that specific window and test it; the selection resets when Privacy Screen stops.

1. 1

   Keep notes in their own app

   Keep the notes in an app you can exclude completely, or in a separate window you explicitly exclude. Notes and slides in the same shared window cannot be separated by ScreenVeil.

2. 2

   Mark the notes app as private

   Add that app to ScreenVeil's Private apps list. Leave your slide or demo app off the list.

3. 3

   Share Privacy Screen

   Start Privacy Screen and leave it open while you pick it in your meeting app. If you share your whole screen instead, ScreenVeil can't filter it.

4. 4

   Do a practice run

   Watch from a second device or make a short test recording. Check the first slide, move to the next one, switch apps, then leave slideshow mode. Open your notes partway through and make sure they never show up.

Why did the slides freeze or disappear when the slideshow started?

The slideshow may have moved into a different window from the one you selected. Stop presenting, find the live slideshow window, select it again and check that advancing a slide updates the received picture.

Google Meet supports tab, window and whole-screen sources. A whole-screen share may seem like an easy way to include the new slideshow window, but it also widens the capture to your notes. Re-select the narrow source instead of changing the boundary mid-call without checking it.

• Google Meet: choose a tab, window or entire screen

Know how to pause the share

Keep your notes short enough to read without covering the windows you need to work in. Before the call, practice pausing: press ⌘⇧B to cover Privacy Screen, or stop sharing in the meeting app. Do that whenever you need to open something you haven't checked, and only resume once your screen shows what you meant to share.

ScreenVeil can't hide just the notes pane inside a slide app you're showing. If the app puts notes and slides in the same window, share a different window or keep your notes somewhere else.

Practice run checklist