Play a PDF
Any PDF becomes a deck: one page fills the screen, letterboxed on black. Arrows, space, the wheel, a swipe or a presenter remote move you along.
WSE ActiveStage has a new address. Install it again from there — your presentations, ink and notes come along. Until then this installed app keeps working. wse-research.org/ActiveStage
Open a PDF file and present it like a slide deck: full-screen pages with a laser pointer, ink and text notes, driven from the keyboard, a clicker or your phone — all inside your browser, nothing installed, nothing uploaded.
Supported: PDF HTML (reveal.js or any web page) Google Slides
or drop PDF files, presentation folders or a Google Slides link below — what you add waits under “Recently opened” (stored only in this browser) until you start it with a click
An HTML presentation (reveal.js or any web page):
A Google Slides presentation, shared with “Anyone with the link”:
Shown last
Most clickers act as a keyboard and work straight away: they send PgDn/PgUp, the arrows, F5, Esc and ., all of which this player listens for. A remote the system does not present as a keyboard can be paired directly — you will be asked to press its forward button, then its back button.
Nothing so far: no message and no error since this page was opened.
Annotations are kept per page and remembered for this PDF in this browser. The chrome shows itself when the pointer comes near it. Within 50 px of the top of the screen the laser point and the mouse cursor both disappear, so the audience is shown a clean slide rather than a pointer left sitting somewhere on it.
A different presentation of this name is stored in this browser: opening this one replaces it.A different presentation of this name is stored in this browser: adding this one replaces it. Nothing of it runs before you start it.
This presentation runs as part of ActiveStage: its scripts can read and change ActiveStage's data in this browser — your stored PDFs, annotations and results — and can take over this page. Open only presentations you trust.
Every presentation under “Recently opened” is removed from this browser, and with it where you left off. Ink and notes stay in this browser: they come back when you add the same presentation again. This cannot be undone.
Put the slides fullscreen on one screen and the speaker view on the other — now and whenever you open the speaker view with these screens?
Nothing is changed: the test window closes at once, and the test room on the pairing service is ended at once.
Any PDF becomes a deck: one page fills the screen, letterboxed on black. Arrows, space, the wheel, a swipe or a presenter remote move you along.
A link in the PDF is clickable with the cursor or the laser: a web link opens in a new tab, a link inside the document jumps to its page. The pen draws over links.
L swaps the cursor for a laser dot with a fading trail. It takes the colour you picked, and disappears near the top of the screen so the slide is shown clean.
Pen and highlighter, five colours, adjustable width — or hold Shift while the laser is on, the way a WSE deck works.
T, then click the page and type. Notes drag, re-open on a double click, scale from the corner and change width from the right border.
The eraser rubs ink out by splitting strokes, not deleting them. Ctrl+Z steps back through everything.
Annotations are kept per page and come back when you re-open the PDF, and you land on the slide you were last showing.
O shows every page as a thumbnail, with a dot on the ones you annotated. G jumps to a page number.
Download every stroke and note as a small JSON file, then import it with the same PDF on another browser. Import is undoable.
S writes the current page to a PNG with your annotations on it — exactly what the audience saw.
The PDF is opened locally and stays there. Recently used files live in this browser's storage and are never uploaded.
Install it like an app. Everything — pdf.js, its fonts, your library — is kept on the device, so a talk never depends on the venue's wifi.
Scan the QR code or type the PIN on another device, and it becomes the remote: it shows the slide and carries the same toolbar — pointer, ink, notes, eraser — and a pinch there zooms the projector.
Load a JSON file of votes, text questions, ranges and media; the audience joins with its own PIN or QR code and answers on their phones, and the results appear live. I opens the panel.
System, light or dark view — on the start page, in the ? help or on a phone. The choice is remembered; the slide itself is never recoloured.
+ - 0 (also with Ctrl), Ctrl + wheel or a pinch zoom around the pointer; the wheel or Ctrl + drag pans while zoomed, and the upper-right corner shows the zoom (a click there picks 125 % to 300 %) with a button to reset it. Ink and notes stay on their words.
Another paired device follows the slide you are showing, annotations and pointer included — useful as a confidence monitor.
Press ? at any time for the full list of keys.
Get a PIN, then open this same page on the other device and type it in. A phone can drive the talk; a second screen can follow it.
Is this screen being shared or projected?
Anyone who can see the PIN or the QR code can connect a phone and take over your presentation. Show them only on a screen the audience cannot see.
Type the PIN shown on the presenting computer, then choose what this device should be.
Devices are paired through the WSE server, which only matches a PIN to a session. The PDF never leaves the presenting browser — a second screen receives a picture of the page being shown, nothing more.
A question from the audience
What the audience answers on their phones — nothing is sent.
What the hall sees when the results are evaluated — random data, arriving as they would in the talk.
A device asks to be the remote: it could change slides and draw.