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Your First Presentation

This page walks you through creating a presentation with Kova from scratch. You should have Kova installed before continuing.

The interface

When you open Kova you'll see four panels:

Panel Location Purpose
Slides Left Thumbnail strip — click any slide to jump to it
Editor Centre-left Write your Markdown here
Preview Centre-right Live rendering of the current slide
Inspector Right Theme, colours, fonts, logo, and text formatting tools

The Inspector can be toggled open or closed with the ⓘ button in the titlebar, independent of focus mode. Inside the Inspector, the Format accordion provides one-click buttons for headings (H1–H6), inline styles (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code), and block elements (lists, blockquote, divider).

The status bar at the bottom shows the current slide number, total word count, and estimated presentation time.

Step 1 — Create a new file

Press Ctrl+N (or click New) to open a starter template:

---
title: My Presentation
date: 2026
---

# My Presentation

---

## First Slide

- Point one
- Point two
- Point three

Step 2 — Edit the frontmatter

The block between the opening --- lines is YAML frontmatter. It controls document-level settings:

---
title: My Talk           # shown in the titlebar; used by themes on the title slide
author: Your Name        # available to themes as a subtitle
date: 2026               # year or full date
theme: slate             # which built-in theme to use (see Themes)
aspect_ratio: "16:9"     # "16:9" or "4:3"
---

Tip

You can change the theme at any time from the Inspector panel without touching frontmatter — Kova writes it for you.

Step 3 — Add slides

Separate slides with --- on a line by itself:

## The Problem

Legacy tools require manual slide design for every change.

---

## Our Approach

Write once in Markdown — Kova handles the rest.

---

## Results

!progress[Adoption](78)
!progress[Satisfaction](91)
!progress[Time saved](65)

Kova automatically selects a layout for each slide based on its content. See Layouts for details on how layout detection works.

Step 4 — Choose a theme

Open the Inspector (click ⓘ in the titlebar). The Theme section shows all 11 built-in themes as swatches. Click any theme to apply it — the change is instant and is saved to your frontmatter automatically.

See Themes for the full list and custom theme instructions.

Step 5 — Present

Click ▶ Present in the titlebar. Kova checks how many displays are connected:

  • External display detected — a dual-screen presenter view opens automatically. Your laptop shows the presenter overlay (current slide, next-slide preview, speaker notes, elapsed timer); the external display shows the audience view fullscreen.
  • Single display — the current slide fills your screen in fullscreen mode.

Navigate with ++arrow-right++ / ++space++ / ++page-down++ (next slide) and ++arrow-left++ / ++page-up++ (previous slide). Press ++escape++ to exit.

See Presenting for the full reference.

Step 6 — Save

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+S Save — overwrites the current file, or opens Save As if the file is new
Ctrl+Shift+S Save As — choose a new location

External editor support

Kova watches the file for external changes and reloads automatically. You can edit your .md file in VS Code, Neovim, or any other editor and see updates live in Kova.

Step 7 — Insert images

Drag an image file from your file manager and drop it onto the editor. Kova inserts a Markdown image reference at the drop position using a path relative to the current document:

![My diagram](./assets/diagram.png)

A dashed overlay appears over the editor while you drag to confirm the drop target.

Note

If no document is currently saved, Kova falls back to the absolute file path. Save your file first to get relative paths.

Next steps

  • Markdown & Syntax

    All the content types Kova supports: code blocks, Mermaid diagrams, progress bars, YouTube embeds, speaker notes, and more

  • Themes

    All 11 built-in themes, Inspector overrides, and how to write a custom theme YAML file

  • Presenting

    Single-screen and dual-screen presenter view, display mode settings

  • Keyboard Shortcuts

    Speed up your workflow with the full shortcut reference