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Projecteur user guide

This guide covers the controls you are likely to set once and rely on during every presentation. For installation and the product overview, start with the README.

Everyday workflow

Launch Projecteur from the application menu. Its Plasma system tray applet shows connected presenters and provides quick access to:

  • the current spotlight preset;
  • Test Spotlight;
  • presentation timer controls;
  • preferences, About, and Quit.

Connection, battery, access-error, and timer notifications use Plasma's native notification system. Customize them under System Settings → Notifications → Applications → Projecteur.

Projecteur stores its settings in ~/.config/projecteurrc.

Spotlight and presets

Under Preferences → Spotlight, you can configure:

  • spotlight size, shape, and rotation;
  • shade color and opacity;
  • center dot and border;
  • cursor appearance;
  • zoom level and content type;
  • multi-screen behavior.

Save combinations as presets when different situations need different treatment: for example, a small dot for slides, a large text magnifier for a code demo, and a borderless highlight for video.

Presets are ordered alphabetically when Projecteur starts. Prefix names with numbers if you want a fixed cycle order, such as 1 Slides, 2 Demo, and 3 Questions.

Live zoom modes

Zoom uses a low-latency stream from KWin through KPipeWire. Videos, animations, and other changing desktop content continue updating inside the magnifier.

Mode Best for Behavior
Smooth (images) Photographs, video, gradients, and mixed content Bilinear filtering produces continuous tones and few scaling artifacts.
Text and UI Documents, terminals, diagrams, and application controls Smooth scaling plus bounded edge enhancement makes interface details easier to read.
Pixel-perfect Pixel art, source-pixel inspection, and debugging Nearest-neighbor scaling preserves captured pixel values; text may look blocky.

The selected mode is stored in each preset. Text and UI improves the captured raster; it cannot recover font outlines or rerender text as vectors.

Live zoom requires Projecteur to be installed. KWin uses the installed desktop metadata to authorize its restricted capture interfaces, so a binary launched only from the build directory cannot use the normal zoom path.

Global shortcuts and device-free use

Projecteur registers native KDE global actions for:

  • toggling the spotlight;
  • opening preferences;
  • starting or resetting the presentation timer;
  • selecting the next or previous preset.

No key combinations are assigned by default. Set them under Preferences → Shortcuts or System Settings → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Projecteur.

This also makes Projecteur useful without presenter hardware: assign Toggle Spotlight, then use it while sharing your screen in a meeting or recording a demo.

Presentation timer

The system tray applet can start the timer immediately or arm it for the next presenter button press. While it runs, the panel icon shows the remaining minutes and its tooltip shows the precise countdown.

When time expires, compatible presenters—including Logitech Spotlight models— can provide configurable haptic feedback.

Button mapping

Projecteur can map device input to:

  • a keyboard sequence;
  • the next or previous spotlight preset;
  • vertical or horizontal scrolling;
  • volume control;
  • other built-in presentation actions.

Keyboard sequences are especially useful for presentation software shortcuts. Projecteur grabs presenter events and forwards unmapped input through a virtual uinput device. Starting with --disable-uinput disables both event grabbing and button mapping.

Logitech hold gestures

Logitech Spotlight devices distinguish three interactions for the Next and Back buttons:

  1. tap;
  2. long press;
  3. hold while moving the presenter.

On the Devices page in Preferences, record taps and long presses directly. To map hold-and-move, wake the presenter with any button, right-click the input sequence column, and choose the relevant hold-and-move input.

Avoid mapping both long press and hold-and-move on the same button unless you want both actions to run when the button is held during movement.

Command-line control

Projecteur can control an already running instance from scripts. Common examples:

projecteur --command spot=toggle
projecteur --command settings=show
projecteur --command preset="2 Demo"

Run projecteur --help-all or man projecteur for the complete command and property reference.