pdfpc is a GTK-based presentation application which uses Keynote-like multi-monitor output to provide meta information to the speaker during the presentation. It is able to show a normal presentation window on one screen, while showing a more sophisticated overview on the other one, providing information like an image of the next slide, time remaining till the end of the presentation, etc. The input files processed by pdfpc are PDF documents, which can be created by most of the present-day presentation software.
More information, including screenshots and demo presentations, can be found at https://pdfpc.github.io/
On Debian, Ubuntu, and other Debian-based systems:
sudo apt-get install pdf-presenter-console
On Fedora:
sudo dnf install pdfpc
On Arch Linux:
sudo pacman -S pdfpc
On Gentoo:
sudo emerge --ask pdfpc
On FreeBSD:
sudo pkg install pdfpc # It is also available under graphics/pdfpc in the ports tree.
On macOS with Homebrew:
# Full macOS integration, including video support brew install pdfpc
On macOS with MacPorts:
# Nice macOS integration, including video support sudo port -v install pdfpc +quartz +video # Less well integrated due to using X11 server, video supported sudo port -v install pdfpc +x11 +video
On Windows 10 (with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)):
Install: 1. Windows: Activate WSL: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/install_guide 2. Windows: Open CMD and run: 'bash' in order to start the WSL-bash 3. WSL-Bash: run: 'sudo apt-get install pdf-presenter-console' Run: 1. Windows: Install a Windows X-Server like VcXsrv: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv 2. Windows: Make the presentation screen your secondary screen and disable the taskbar on that screen 3. Windows: Start the X-Server with: 'vcxsrv -nodecoration -screen 0 @1 -screen 1 @2 +xinerama' 4. Windows: Open CMD and run: 'bash' in order to start the WSL-bash 5. WSL-Bash: run: 'DISPLAY=:0 pdfpc <your PDF file>' to open your presentation with pdfpc
Try it out:
pdfpc pdfpc-demo.pdf
If you encounter problems while running pdfpc, please consult the FAQ first.
In order to compile and run pdfpc, the following requirements need to be met:
- cmake >= 3.7
- vala >= 0.48
- gtk+ >= 3.22
- gee >= 0.8
- poppler >= 0.8 with glib bindings
- pangocairo
- gstreamer >= 1.0 with gst-plugins-good
- discount (aka markdown2 or 3)
- webkit2gtk
- json-glib
- libsoup3
- libqrencode
E.g., on Ubuntu 22.04 onward, you can install these dependencies with:
sudo apt-get install cmake valac libgee-0.8-dev libpoppler-glib-dev libgtk-3-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libjson-glib-dev libmarkdown2-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libsoup3.0-dev libqrencode-dev gstreamer1.0-gtk3
(the last one is a run-time dependence). You should also consider installing all
plugins to support required video formats; chances are they are already present
through dependencies of ubuntu-desktop.
On macOS with Homebrew, the easiest way is to install all dependencies of the pdfpc package without pdfpc itself:
brew install --only-dependencies pdfpc
On macOS with MacPorts, you can install all dependencies using the port command:
# list dependencies for the +quartz +video variant # (good macOS integration) port deps pdfpc +quartz +video # install dependencies sudo port -v install cmake vala pkgconfig gtk3 +quartz poppler libgee librsvg gstreamer1-gst-plugins-good +gtk3 # list dependencies for the +x11 +video variant # (using X11 server) port deps pdfpc +x11 +video # install dependencies sudo port -v install cmake vala pkgconfig gtk3 +x11 poppler libgee librsvg gstreamer1-gst-plugins-good +gtk3 +x11
On Windows with MSYS2/MinGW-w64, the dependencies are installed with:
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-pkg-config mingw-w64-x86_64-vala mingw-w64-x86_64-libgee mingw-w64-x86_64-poppler mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk3 mingw-w64-x86_64-gstreamer mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-plugins-base mingw-w64-x86_64-json-glib mingw-w64-x86_64-libsoup mingw-w64-x86_64-qrencode mingw-w64-x86_64-discount
(change x86_64 to i686 if you want to compile the 32-bit variant).
You can download the latest stable release of pdfpc in the release section of github (https://github.com/pdfpc/pdfpc/releases). Uncompress the tarball (we use v4.6.0 as an example here):
tar xvf pdfpc-4.6.0.tar.gz
Change to the extracted directory:
cd pdfpc-4.6.0
Compile and install:
mkdir build/ cd build/ cmake .. make sudo make install
If there are no errors in the process, you just installed pdfpc on your system. Congratulations! If there were errors, they are probably due to missing dependencies. Please check that you have all the necessary libraries (in some distributions you may have to install -devel packages).
Note: You may alter the final installation prefix in the cmake call. By default, the pdfpc files will be installed under /usr/local/. If you want to change that, for example to be installed under /usr/, you can specify another installation prefix as follows:
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr" ..
By default, pdfpc includes support for movie playback. This requires several gstreamer dependencies. The requirement for these packages can be removed by compiling without support for movie playback by passing -DMOVIES=OFF to the cmake command.
To disable support for the built-in REST Web server, pass -DREST=OFF to cmake. In this case, libsoup and libqrencode are not needed.
To disable support for viewing notes in the Markdown format, pass -DMDVIEW=OFF to cmake. In this case, webkit2gtk is not needed. If webkit2gtk is not available for your OS (i.e., macOS or Windows), you must pass this option for the build to succeed.
On Windows, the compilation has been tested with the Ninja backend, so pass -DCMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM=ninja to the cmake command and use ninja instead of make.
Some distributions do not have a valac executable. Instead they ship with a version suffix like valac-0.40. If cmake cannot find the Vala compiler, you can try running cmake with:
cmake -DVALA_EXECUTABLE:NAMES=valac-0.40 ..
pdfpc was initially developed as pdfpc-presenter-console by Jakob Westhoff (https://github.com/jakobwesthoff/Pdf-Presenter-Console) then further extended by David Vilar (https://github.com/davvil/pdfpc).