Running Macro or Javascript in Keynote?

Question

Our church uses Keynote for putting songs on the projector, along with other things.

At the end of service, we have a countdown timer for when classes will start.

I've been wanting to add text showing when classes will end, but as it can change each week due to length of services, it can't be static.

Is there any way to embed something like JS in Keynote so it could take the current time, add 45 minutes to it, and then display the resulting time as text?

You might be able to do that with apple script. Also, pro presenter might be a more robust solution — Daniel A. White, Sep 11 '22 at 16:05

inwerpsel · Answer 1 · 2022-09-20T15:21:35.307

You should be able to do this with this library (there may be others around too). The repo has some usage examples for various things.

Some basic examples:

// This one should allow to use existing documents in JS.
const result = await document.getSelectedDocument();
console.log(result);

const doc = new Document({ name: 'Test 123', theme: 'Test Theme' });
const docSlides = await doc.getSlides();

docSlides[0].setTitle('Welcome to Slide 1!', { fontSize: 90 });

You can easily add a date to this title string and format it to your liking. How to add some amount of minutes to a date is addressed in this SO question.

It doesn't mention any additional setup, beyond running it with NodeJS (node my-script.js). The application detects the currently active Keynote window by itself.

Perhaps it needs some kind of OS permission, but I can't test it as I'm currently not on an Apple device.

You can just copy and adapt their example scripts as a starting point, and you should be able to get it working.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 25 '22 at 17:10

0

Maybe a more easy solution is to create a slide deck with 45 slides stating XX minutes left, from 45 to 0. Then add an automatic slide animation on all slides that runs every minute and shows the next slide.

answered Sep 25 '22 at 17:10

Gabe

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 26 '22 at 08:50

I think this library can help

https://github.com/macintoshhelper/keynote-js

const { document } = require('keynote-js');

const main = async () => {
  const doc = new Document({ name: 'Test 123', theme: 'Test Theme' });

  await doc.create();

  const parentDoc = await doc.get();
  
  const docSlides = await doc.getSlides();

  // First slide is created by default, when we initialise the Document, so we can just access it with docSlides[0] and modify it.
  docSlides[0].setTitle('Welcome to Slide 1!', { fontSize: 90 });
  
  // Creating new slides:
  const slide = await new Slide({
    parent: parentDoc,
    baseSlide: {
      name: 'Title - Center'
    },
    title: 'Welcome to the Second Slide!'
  });

  await slide.create();
};

main();

Running Macro or Javascript in Keynote?

3 Answers3