LaTeX beamer slides with notes

06 Jan, 2025 • 291 words • 2 min

⚠️ This post is over one year old. It may no longer be up to date or relevant. Opinions may have changed.

(via Andrej Bauer from University of Ljubljana, adapted):

     tex
     
   
\documentclass[12pt]{beamer}

\usepackage{pgfpages}

%\setbeameroption{hide notes} % Only slides
%\setbeameroption{show only notes} % Only notes
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen=right} % Both

% Give a slight yellow tint to the notes page
\setbeamertemplate{note page}{\pagecolor{yellow!5}\insertnote}\usepackage{palatino}

\title{How to make Beamer slides with notes}
\author{Thiago Perrotta\\Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro}
\date{\small \today}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
  \titlepage

  \note[item]{Thank the audience for being awake.}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
  \begin{itemize}
  \item Here are
  \item some very boring bullets
  \item about nothing.
  \end{itemize}

  \note[item]{Note that this slide is boring.}

  \note[item]{Observe that there are no actual bullets here.}

  \note[item]{Future work: add another bullet.}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

I created a sample LaTeX project on Overleaf because I did not want to install the full texlive suite on my Mac.

It compiled successfully and worked beautifully.

The workflow is: 1) Generate the notes:

\setbeameroption{hide notes} % Only slides
%\setbeameroption{show only notes} % Only notes
%\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen=right} % Both

Generate the slides:

%\setbeameroption{hide notes} % Only slides
\setbeameroption{show only notes} % Only notes
%\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen=right} % Both

Then present the slides in the projector whilst keeping the notes open in your laptop.

The author suggests to use Skim.app to sync both documents. It’s a good idea, I had used it at the time when I wrote my undergrad thesis.

Overleaf is quite different today than from 8 years ago:

There is a visual editor (ala LyX¹)
There’s first-class integration with Academia (Zotero, Mendeley)
There’s an AI-based language feedback feature (is this surprising in 2025?)
There’s first-class git integration / github sync

Very cool!

I used to love LyX. It used to be my favorite way to create slides / presentations for university. I am happy to see it’s still under active development. ↩︎

Backlinks

Skim (Feb 08, 2026)

¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)