Getting Started With Obsidian Excalidraw Slideshow V4  🔗 **Source:** [Getting Started With Obsidian Excalidraw Slideshow V4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [excalidraw, obsidian, presentation-design, visual-note-taking, speaker-notes] > author: Zsolt's Visual Personal Knowledge Management > source: Zsolt's Visual Personal Knowledge Management (YouTube) > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU > date created: 2026-09-13 > --- > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > # 🏷️ Title: Getting Started with Obsidian Excalidraw Slideshow v4 > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > ### 🔗 References > - [Video: Getting Started with Obsidian Excalidraw Slideshow v4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU) > - [Slideshow script source, `ea-scripts/Slideshow.md`](https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/blob/master/ea-scripts/Slideshow.md) > - [Obsidian Excalidraw 2.27.0 release notes (autostart scripts)](https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/releases/tag/2.27.0) > - [Obsidian Excalidraw 2.27.3, latest release](https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/releases/tag/2.27.3) > ## 📝 Summary > - **What happened:** Zsolt, the channel's presenter, walks through the first chapters of the Slideshow v4 script for the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin in 23:19. The video covers installing the script, building frame-based slides, naming decks and slides, excluding slides, choosing marker frames over normal frames, and fitting frames to the 1920×1080 presentation ratio. > - **Why it matters:** A single Excalidraw drawing can now carry several named presentations, per-slide Markdown presenter notes, and a presenter view on a second display. The script source confirms notes live in the drawing itself (`frame.customData.slideshow.notes`), so a talk and its visual summary stay in one `.excalidraw.md` file. > - **Key stakeholders:** Obsidian Excalidraw users who present from their drawings; the plugin maintainer (GitHub `zsviczian`); members of the paid Sketch Your Mind community, where the rest of the course lives. > - **Risks and tradeoffs:** The script needs Excalidraw 2.27.0 or newer and asks for autostart permission. Presenter view doesn't run on Obsidian Mobile. Normal frames move and crop their contents, which broke an arrow binding in the 16:01 demo. The YouTube cut stops at 22:43; speaker notes, animations, line-to-frame conversion, and export settings are listed at 0:00–2:34 but only covered in the paid course. > - **Bottom line:** Switch to marker frames, fit each frame to the presentation aspect ratio, and name every slide. Those three steps come from the free portion and are enough to present an existing drawing. > ## 📖 Main Content > - **Two slideshow types.** Frame-based decks use the drawing's frames as slides. Line-based decks use the points of a line or arrow as the slide path. The free video covers frame-based decks only. Per the script docs, a drawing holds one frame deck plus any number of named line decks. > - **Install and launch.** You install Slideshow from the Excalidraw script library, reached from the Obsidian tools panel. Pin it by long-pressing its button. Launch modifiers, confirmed in the script docs: plain click = fullscreen, Alt/Option = windowed, Shift = resume from the saved slide, Cmd/Ctrl = open the sidepanel instead of presenting (the video doesn't mention Cmd/Ctrl). You can also run it from the command palette (Ctrl+P, "slideshow"). > - **Autostart.** On first run the script asks for autostart permission so it can add an edit button to frames and lines. The 2.27.0 release notes add `registerAutostart()` and an **Autostart scripts** command. The caption's "Excalidraw 227" means 2.27.0; the script calls `verifyMinimumPluginVersion("2.27.0")`. > - **Sidepanel and slide sorter.** The pencil button opens the sidepanel. There you name the deck, rename slides, reorder them, exclude slides, and press Play. Excluded slides stay in the drawing; the camera still pans across them, but the deck doesn't stop there. > - **Normal frames vs. marker frames.** A normal frame owns the elements inside it: it crops them when resized and drags them when moved. Moving one broke an arrow's connection in the 16:01 demo. A marker frame (dotted outline) only marks a region, so elements stay put and arrows stay bound. Zsolt says marker frames don't appear in image or PDF exports while normal frames do. You toggle between the two in the element properties panel. > - **Slide sizing.** A frame sets the center of the view, but the screen's shape decides how much of the drawing shows. A circle placed beside a frame showed up during the 20:25 demo. The **Fit frame to presentation aspect ratio** action resizes the frame to the configured ratio, 1920×1080 by default (confirmed in the script source), so you can position it to hide content you want to reveal later. > - **Terms.** *Frame*: an Excalidraw container element. *Marker frame*: an Obsidian Excalidraw frame variant that doesn't own its contents. *Presenter view*: a desktop-only Obsidian popout window showing the current slide, Markdown notes, and the next slide or build. > - **Uncertainties and verification status.** > - Verified against GitHub on 2026-09-13: latest release 2.27.3 (published 2026-09-06); autostart API in 2.27.0 (published 2026-09-03); Slideshow.md embeds this video and names it "Slideshow v4"; last commit 4f6dc62 on 2026-09-13; minimum plugin 2.27.0; 1920×1080 default; Alt/Shift/Cmd modifiers; presenter view desktop-only; excluded slides omitted from presentation and PDF. > - Overstated at 11:48: the video says sort order no longer depends on slide names. The script docs say frames without slideshow metadata keep alphabetical order until the first sorter change writes explicit `order` metadata. > - Not verified: the claim that marker frames never export to PNG or PDF (I didn't read the plugin's export code or run an export); the marker-frame toggle location; the Sketch Your Mind course contents and pricing. > - Caption spellings: "Xournalpp" at 3:26 and 3:56 likely means "Excalidraw" (caption spelling; unverified). "Sketchnote Mind community" is the Sketch Your Mind Community, confirmed by the `community.sketch-your-mind.com/slideshow` link in the script header. "Xcolyture Mastery" at 22:43 matches "Excalidraw Mastery" at 2:34 (caption spelling; unverified). > ## 🗒️ Notes > #### ⏱️ [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU&t=0) Course outline > - Slideshow is on its fourth major version. > - Planned topics: first slideshow, frame vs. line decks, slide sorter and sidepanel, progressive reveals ("animations"), speaker notes, conversion, print and export, expert settings. > #### ⏱️ [1:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU&t=77) Speaker notes and presenter view > - Each slide can hold presenter notes; a separate presenter view runs on a second screen. > - Example: present from a MacBook with an iPad attached through macOS Sidecar as the notes screen. > - Line decks and frame decks convert into each other; the reasons are held for the paid course. > #### ⏱️ [2:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU&t=154) Scope disclosure > - The YouTube video covers only the first chapters. The full course sits in the paid Sketch Your Mind community alongside Mind Map Builder, Excalidraw Mastery, and a daily visual note-taking course. > #### ⏱️ [3:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DDY8rRDzdU&t=206) Installing the script > - Obsidian tools panel → "install or update" scripts opens the script lib [0:00] Hey everyone, it's Zsolt here. Welcome to this walk-through of the slideshow version 4 script. As the name suggests, this is already version 4 of the script, so I had lots of iterations around this. And this time around, I have lots of new features, so let me show you what we're going to be covering. We're going to start with introducing how you can create your first slideshow. It's really quick, really easy, but you need to know how to get started. Then we're going to dive into discussing the two types of slideshows you can create and talk a little bit about the differences. One are frame-based slideshows, the other [0:42] are line-based slideshows. And once we've covered these basic topics, then we're going to jump into some of the cool new features, because these have existed until now. There are some enhancements, but these basic slideshows were there. We're going to talk about the slide sorter and the side panel. Then we're going to look at animations, or actually they're just progressive reveals, but I think they add super value to your slides, and we're going to look at how you can create those. [1:17] Then we're going to talk about speaker notes. Now you can add your own presenter notes to each of the slides. And of course, you can not only just add them, but now there is a separate presenter view. So if you have two monitors, then on one monitor you can see the presenter view, the other the slides. For example, if you're at a conference and you're presenting from your MacBook and you have an iPad using the Sidecar feature in macOS, you can actually use your presenter viewer, have your presenter view on your iPad and you can control the presentation from there and see your notes. I think it's super cool and super [2:04] efficient. Then we're going to talk about how you can convert line-based slides into frame-based slides and the other way around and I think more importantly why you would want to do this in the first place. You can also print and export your slides. So we're going to talk about some of the settings around this, how you can set the aspect ratio of the page and yeah, how all of this works. [2:34] And finally, some expert features. There are some settings that you can customize different aspects of how the slideshow actually is run. For example, aspect ratio, but others as well. So this is going to be our last session in this quick overview. Now, just a word of caution or just being transparent, this video on YouTube is not going to cover the entire story. I'm going to cover the first couple of chapters and if you like it, then I encourage you to subscribe to the Sketchnote Mind community and you'll find the entire course there as well as you're going to find other Excalidraw courses like Mind Map Builder, Excalidraw Mastery, [3:26] uh the daily visual note-taking course, and over time other courses as well. So I encourage you to check the link in the video description. But for now, let's dive in and let's look at so how can you create your first slideshow? And I think before you create your first slideshow, of course the question is how do you install this? So to install the slideshow script, you need to come here and Xournalpp to the Obsidian tools panel. [3:56] And here, if you click on install or update Xournalpp script, then the script store or script library opens. And if you scroll down here, slideshow is right at the top. If you click this, then you click here to install. Of course, you can also search. So, you can search, and that's going to come up with the same result. I already have slideshow installed, so I did not install slideshow at this time. [4:30] How do you create a slideshow then? So, once you have the script installed, I'm going to click here to close this button. The easiest way to create a slideshow is to add a frame. So, I'm going to come here to the more tools menu and select the frame tool and draw a frame. Now, you can see that my frame is a dotted line. This is called a marker frame. [4:56] More on this later, but here I just want to show you that this is the normal frame, and this is the marker frame. I like the marker frames better. And again, I'll talk about this in a moment, but for now, let's just um create these frames. And you can also, of course, always convert them. The way I'm creating new frames uh each time is there's a keyboard shortcut. I'm pressing the F key. So, you can see here, F is uh the shortcut for frames. And then, I can just quickly draw a frame here. And once I have all of my frames ready, then I can select my frame, and I can start [5:42] the slideshow. To start the slideshow, you have a couple of options. And let me show you you will notice that I have this slideshow button here, but let me show you how to put it here. Now I'm going to long click on this so click and hold this button. And with that, it disappeared. So these here are scripts that I have pinned to the sidebar. And if I scroll down here and look for the slideshow button, then if I click and hold this button, then I'm going to pin it right here. So this way I was able to pin my slideshow. [6:21] And this is my preferred way of starting slideshows that I come here and click. Now, there are some modifier keys and they're going to talk about them later on. If I hold down the alt or option key while pressing this button, then the slideshow is going to run in the window the Obsidian window that you have active. If I just press the button, then it's going to be full screen. [6:52] This time I'm going to use the alt key because I have a large monitor and it won't fit the YouTube video. So here if I click alt click the slideshow, then the first time you run slideshow, you're going to be presented with this question. It's a confirmation. Slideshow will add some buttons to your lines and to your frames. And for that to appear, slideshow, the script needs to auto start each time you open a drawing. [7:27] My recommendation is to click on auto auto start here. This is a new feature in Excalidraw 227 that you can create auto start scripts. There are many benefits of that. But for now, if you see this prompt, just simply click auto start. Of course, you can click ask me every time. I think you're not going to get that good of an experience with the script if you choose that. So, I'm going to click auto start. [7:57] And of course, now I did was not holding down the alt key, so this is now full screen. So, I'm going to close my slideshow and again, I'm going to select the first slide and hold down the alt key and now it's only here. I mean, only in the window. And now if I start to use I can use the arrow keys. So, you can see here I can I can choose between slides like this and I can jump to slide four for example and I can use the arrow keys to navigate here between the slides and that's how you can run a slideshow. So, [8:40] running a slideshow and using existing frames is super easy. Now, you could also start a slideshow from the command palette. If I now open the Obsidian command palette, control P and I type in slide show like that, I can also just run the slideshow from here. I won't start it. It does the same thing. One thing that you're going to immediately observe is now that this has been designated as a slideshow, then I have these buttons at the top. [9:19] And let's now talk about those buttons in terms of how what these do. So, if I click the pencil button right there, that's going to edit the slideshow. Effectively, it's going to open the side panel here. And in the side panel, I can do couple of things. For example, I can also start the slideshow from here. So, I can start my frame-based slideshow in a window from the start. I have couple of options in all of these, but yeah, I'm going to if I press the play button here, it's exactly the same effect as I started with alt uh button. It's just going to run the slideshow. Now, if I [10:05] wanted panel back, I can either click here on the button or I can click here to open the side panel and I have my slides right here. So, with that, let's move on to talking about the frame-based presentations. So, you already saw how I created this frame-based slideshow. I effectively uh yeah, I added frames and with that, I created the slideshow. Now, I can give my slideshow a name. You can see here that the right now it's called frame slideshow. [10:45] And there I also have a line presentation. That was my presentation that I used at the introduction of this video. We'll talk about that in the next lesson. So, I can name my frame slideshow. If I click here, I can give the slideshow a name and this is going to be I don't know, lessons 1-5 presentation. I'm going to give this name to my slideshow. No big deal. [11:16] It received a name. The name is good because then if you have multiple slideshows, imagine you have a big whiteboard, for example, my book on a pages. I use them in different contexts for different purposes. Sometimes I do an entire walk-through of my book on a page. Sometimes I focus on a topic or I use it as input for a course. So, I have multiple presentations on the same drawing, and that's why it's good to give these a name. [11:48] Now, some other things you can do here, you can also give your individual slides a name. So, you can see here right now my slides are called 01, 02, etc. This is a new feature that now the sort order doesn't depend on the name of the slide. Earlier, it was in alphabetical order. So, I can just simply give this slide a name. So, this is going to be frame presentations. [12:19] Then, I think the next one is going to be line presentations. And one thing that you can observe in the background is effectively the name of the slide I've given appears as the name of the slide here. So, you could actually also edit the name here as well. But, if the name is short, then it's very tricky to click to edit that. What you can do is you can select the frame and press enter, and then you can say your actually your first slide show like that. [13:03] And you can see here it updated the name here as well, and I can just scroll down here, and let's finish this. So, this is Um oh, what what's this is? Oh, this is the sorter. And then, finally, I have animations. Like that. So, I created the names for these. Why is this good? Well, if I run the slideshow now in a window, then you can see here that now I have proper names for my slides. So, in my presenter view, I can quickly switch to the slide I want. I don't need to remember the name, and you can still see the slide order and the total number of slides here. So, [13:49] yeah, I think naming slides is useful for this reason. Now, let's go back to some other things here. So, when you're doing frame-based presentations, you can also decide to exclude a slide from the slideshow. Let's say I don't want to show the line presentation, so I can click here to hide that slide. So, now when I run the slideshow, then I'm going to have slide one, slide two, and then we're going to slide over slide three, and we're jumping to slide four, and slide five. [14:30] Now, of course, you did see the part that we slid over because Excalidraw moves the camera around between your slides, but of course, depending on your slide layout or drawing layout, when you hide a slide, it doesn't become invisible. The presentation simply does not stop at that slide. Now, let's talk about frame types because I think that's still a question probably in your mind. So, let me show you this scenario. Let's say I have here a label, and I'm going to have another label here. So, this is Yeah, maybe it's better. This is going to be B. This is going to be A, and I'm going to have [15:20] this arrow in between. But, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to create a frame here, and this is going to be a normal frame that I'm going to create deliberately like this. So, you can see here that A is outside the frame and B and the arrow are inside the frame. This can Maybe it's easier to understand if you see that this is a big object. And this is a big object, and between the two you have an arrow. Now, it's much easier to imagine why this setup would happen. [16:01] And now imagine that I actually realized that this Oops, now you can already see the problems here. But, first I want to show you this that if I drag my slide to be smaller because that is the cutout I want on the screen then suddenly the rest of the line is hidden because that's how frames work. But, there's another problem as well. If I now pick up this frame and the drag it then oops the connection was broken. [16:37] So, the nature of normal frames is they capture the elements inside the frame, and in many cases this can be good. So, I think also the cropping of the frame can be super helpful. So, for example, if I want to size something to be exactly a certain size, and I want to crop items around it. We won't go into it now because this is not about that topic. Frames can be good for presentations. [17:11] Frankly, I don't prefer the normal frames because they they can damage my drawing the way you just saw how if I pull this I disconnect the line. Instead, I like to use marker frames. So, if I change these two to marker frames, then what you will see is if I change the position of the frame, it doesn't hide the entire drawing. And also, if I move the frame, it will not move the elements. I need to be deliberate. I can say that I'm going to now move the frame and letter B, and then of course the arrow will stay connected. [17:52] So, this is why I'm This is the reason why I created marker frames because for a number of use cases, I think it's better if the frame does not capture the elements. Also, marker frames are never printed. So, essentially, if you place a marker frame on your drawing and then you print it, either screenshot or well, not I mean, you export it as an image here via the export image menu. So, you export it as an image or you export it as PDF, the marker frames are not going to be shown. [18:33] The normal frames, they are going to show up. There are ways around it. I have a couple of settings, but that is not the topic today. So, that's hopefully that gives you clarity on why I'm using marker frames and not using normal frames for slideshows. And you can also see how you can change between them. Essentially, on the element properties panel, you can click here to switch marker frames on, off, and yeah, that's how it works. [19:06] The final thing we want to talk about here is slide sizing. So, you have a presentation aspect ratio and a uh you can you have a resize frame action. So, essentially, the issue is or well, it's not the issue, but this is uh the the nature of uh how the slideshow works is the slideshow the the slide itself sets the center of your drawing, but of course, depending on the geometry of your screen, of your view the the actual cutout can be different. [19:46] So, let me show you this. I'm going to place this circle right here. I'm going to delete this because this is not needed. And you see, I created this slide frame and so, this is my the slide I want to present. And I don't want O to be presented. And by the way, let we are now going to look at a feature. So, instead of um instead of starting at the beginning, I want to present the current slide in window. And so, let's present this slide and let's observe what happens. [20:25] And you can see what happens. Essentially, the circle is part of the slide as well. And that's because the the slide itself provided a cutout, but then the entire screen or the area is bigger and the cutout was centered. So, things on the side appear. But sometimes, you don't want that thing on the side to appear because you want to hide it until the slideshow gets there because it would be yeah, a spoiler about the next slide. So, in that case, that's where this other button comes to the picture. So, you have this button that's going to fit the frame to the aspect ratio of the screen. So, [21:15] this is now our screen's aspect ratio. And with this, I can actually position the frame such So, this is how my the default aspect ratio is HD, so it's 1920 by 1080 uh resolution. If now I start the slideshow, and the way I'm going to start the slideshow is I'm going to hold down the Alt and the Shift key while pressing the button. Alt will start the presentation in this window. Shift is going to re- continue from the last slide, which was this slide. So, this is the easiest way. [21:57] And there you go. So, you can see because I had my slide cut out based on because my slide had the aspect ratio of the the screen, I could arrange my slide such that the circle is not visible. So, I'm not giving away a detail to my audience, something that I wanted to hide until the end. So, I think hopefully that clarifies how all of this works. So, that was about building frame presentations. So, this is where my YouTube video stops. If you're interested again, I encourage you to come to the Sketchnote Mind community. [22:43] You can sign up for 1 month and consume all of the courses within 1 month, of course. I hope that you stay in the community and you enjoy the community, but yeah. I encourage you to check the link below and sign up, and then complete Xcolyture Mastery, Mind Map Builder, the daily visual notes, and the slideshow version four courses. I think they are all very nice and valuable short courses similar to this one. [23:16] And then let's continue in there., Getting Started With Obsidian Excalidraw Slideshow V4, Zsolt's Visual Personal Knowledge Management, 01m2eg1te7b046bve7rqzzfem4.