Control PowerPoint with Companion and Stream Deck
APS has deep, built-in integration with PowerPoint on both Mac and Windows. You don’t need any plugins—installing APS is enough for the app to communicate directly with PowerPoint and expose professional control and feedback features.
With APS, Companion and Stream Deck, you can control PowerPoint by:
- Opening, closing and seamlessly switching between PowerPoint files
- Advancing slides and monitoring slide and build progress
- Getting a countdown of how much time is left in PowerPoint videos
- …and much more
In this guide we’ll show how to set up Companion with APS for PowerPoint and highlight the differences between the macOS and Windows versions.
1. PowerPoint file control
APS has multiple ways to open PowerPoint files from Companion buttons: You can select individual presentations that are fixed to a button-position, or spread all presentation-files from a folder over a range of buttons. The “Next” command will take you to the next presentation in a folder, when a powerpoint-presentation is in fullscreen.
From the presets you can drag and drop “open presentation” commands to the buttons as needed.
PowerPoint file-control is similar to how we control Keynote (Mac) and PDF. You can mix these file-formats and switch seamlessly between them from the same type of Companion buttons.
Learn more about presentation file-control through APS and Compaion
2. Settings for PowerPoint
Companion options
All the Companion commands to open PowerPoint presentations have two options in common
Go to slide
This sets the slide from where the Presentation will start. The option accepts variables, which makes it possible to remotely control this number in more advanced setups.
Run presentation in fullscreen
If this option is on, PowerPoint will open in fullscreen/slide show mode. If this option is off, the PowerPoint file will just be opened in edit-mode.
APS settings for PowerPoint
PowerPoint for Mac and Windows has some different settings from the APS menu
Windows:
Option to open in “Read Only” mode. For troubleshooting, or to ensure that the powerpoint file will not be changed, this can be a good option.
Mac:
Option for “Hide presenter for PowerPoint”. If on, presenter-view isnt used with APS commands. If on, presenter-view will always be used with APS commands to display PowerPoint when an external monitor is attached. Note that this will override the internal powerpoint-settings in PowerPoint Mac
For Windows, the presenter-view settings will be decided from the settings from the PowerPoint app itself.
Apart from what is mentioned here, all settings for how PowerPoint will be displayed is decided from the internal PowerPoint settings. For example, the slideshow-mode will always show on the same display regardless if you use internal PowerPoint commands or APS to start the presentation.
3. Control and monitor PowerPoint slides from Companion
With APS and Companion you can advance your slide, go to a specific slide, and get information about the slides in your current PowerPoint presentation. Most of the commands can be found from the preset-folder “Presentation slide control”
Next/previous slide and Go To slide
There are two ways to go to specific Powerpoint slides:
Generic Slide commands
These will emulate keyboard-shortcuts and work for all APS-controllable presentation-programs. Use these if you plan to control more than just PowerPoint. In the presets, these are the first 3 buttons starting with “Slide”
PowerPoint specific commands
These will only work with PowerPoint, and they dont require PowerPoint to be in keyboard-focus, the only requirement is that a PowerPoint presentation is displayed. In the presets, these commands starts with PPT
Monitor slide progress
The bottom button in the presets will show the current slide and total number of slides in the presentation.
For Windows we also have the option to show the current build-number, and total build in the current presentation. These are variables that are not found in the presets, but you can find them from the list of variables and place them in the text-field of the buttons. The variables are called:
$(aps:Slides_current_build)
$(aps:Slides_builds_count)
4. PowerPoint media control (NEW!)
APS 3.4 introduces PowerPoint media control on Windows — a feature that lets Companion and Stream Deck show how much time is left in embedded PowerPoint videos, and trigger playback directly from your buttons.
This feature is available only on Windows.
With APS and Companion, you can:
- Start, pause, and stop videos embedded in a PowerPoint slide
- Seek forward/backwards in the video timeline
- See a live countdown of the remaining video time
- Monitor playback state (Playing, Paused, Stopped, Ready)
This makes PowerPoint behave more like a basic media-server inside Companion — especially useful when presenters use videos as VT clips during talks or live streams.
Companion presets for PowerPoint media
In the Companion presets, open the “PowerPoint media control” folder to access the most common commands and feedback options for controlling videos in PowerPoint.
The Play/Pause toggle button changes color based on the playback state:
- Green when the video is ready to play
- Red when the video is playing
The counter button displays how much time is left in the media element, including trimmed videos.
All PowerPoint media presets are clearly labeled with “PPT” for quick identification.