Exporting

Usually the slides are displayed in a web browser, but you can also export them to PDF, PPTX, PNG, or Markdown files for sharing or printing. This feature is available through the CLI command slidev export.

However, interactive features in your slides may not be available in the exported files. You can build and host your slides as a web application to keep the interactivity. See Building and Hosting for more information.

Preparation

Exporting to PDF, PPTX, or PNG relies on Playwright for rendering the slides. Therefore playwright-chromium is required to be installed in your project:

npm

$ npm i -D playwright-chromium

pnpm

$ pnpm add -D playwright-chromium

yarn

$ yarn add -D playwright-chromium

Formats

PDF

After installing playwright-chromium as described above, you can export your slides to PDF using the following command:

$ slidev export

By default, the PDF will be placed at ./slides-export.pdf.

PPTX

Slidev can also export your slides as a PPTX file:

$ slidev export --format pptx

Note that all the slides in the PPTX file will be exported as images, so the text will not be selectable. Presenter notes will be conveyed into the PPTX file on a per-slide basis.

In this mode, the --with-clicks option is enabled by default. To disable it, pass --with-clicks false.

PNGs and Markdown

When passing in the --format png option, Slidev will export PNG images for each slide instead of a PDF:

$ slidev export --format png

You can also compile a markdown file composed of compiled png using --format md:

$ slidev export --format md

Options

Here are some common options you can use with the slidev export command. For a full list of options, see the CLI documentation.

Export Clicks Steps

By default, Slidev exports one page per slide with clicks animations disabled. If you want to export slides with multiple steps into multiple pages, pass the --with-clicks option:

$ slidev export --with-clicks

Output Filename

You can specify the output filename with the --output option:

$ slidev export --output my-pdf-export

Or in the headmatter configuration:

---
exportFilename: my-pdf-export
---

Export with Range

By default, all slides in the presentation are exported. If you want to export a specific slide or a range of slides you can set the --range option and specify which slides you would like to export:

$ slidev export --range 1,6-8,10

This option accepts both specific slide numbers and ranges. The example above would export slides 1,6,7,8 and 10.

Multiple Exports

You can also export multiple slides at once:

$ slidev export slides1.md slides2.md

Or (only available in certain shells):

$ slidev export *.md

In this case, each input file will generate its own PDF file.

Dark Mode

In case you want to export your slides using the dark version of the theme, use the --dark option:

$ slidev export --dark

Timeouts

For big presentations, you might want to increase the Playwright timeout with --timeout:

$ slidev export --timeout 60000

Wait

Some parts of your slides may require a longer time to render. You can use the --wait option to have an extra delay before exporting:

$ slidev export --wait 10000

There is also a --wait-until option to wait for a state before exporting each slide. If you keep encountering timeout issues, you can try setting this option:

$ slidev export --wait-until none

Possible values:

• 'networkidle' - (default) consider operation to be finished when there are no network connections for at least 500 ms. This is the safest, but may cause timeouts.
• 'domcontentloaded' - consider operation to be finished when the DOMContentLoaded event is fired.
• 'load' - consider operation to be finished when the load event is fired.
• 'none' - do not wait for any event.

WARNING

When specifying values other than 'networkidle', please make sure the printed slides are complete and correct. If some contents are missing, you may need to use the --wait option.

Executable Path

Chromium may miss some features like codecs that are required to decode some videos. You can set the browser executable path for Playwright to your Chrome or Edge using --executable-path:

$ slidev export --executable-path [path_to_chromium]

PDF Outline

Available since v0.36.10

You can generate the PDF outline by passing the --with-toc option:

$ slidev export --with-toc

Omit Background

When exporting to PNGs, you can remove the default browser background by passing --omit-background:

$ slidev export --omit-background

The default browser background is the white background visible on all browser windows and is different than other backgrounds applied throughout the application using CSS styling. See Playwright docs. You will then need to apply additional CSS styling to the application to reveal the transparency.

Here is a basic example that covers all backgrounds in the application:

* {
  background: transparent !important;
}

Troubleshooting

Missing Content or Animation not Finished

If you find that some content is missing or the animations are not finished in the exported PDF, you can try adding a wait time before exporting each slide:

$ slidev export --wait 1000

Broken Emojis

If the PDF or PNG are missing Emojis, you are likely missing required fonts (such as. e.g. Google's Noto Emoji) in your environment.

This can affect e.g. CI/CD-like in-container sort of Linux environments. It can be fixed e.g. like this:

$ curl -L --output NotoColorEmoji.ttf https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji/raw/main/fonts/NotoColorEmoji.ttf
$ sudo mv NotoColorEmoji.ttf /usr/local/share/fonts/
$ fc-cache -fv

Wrong Context in Global Layers

See the tip in https://sli.dev/features/global-layers.