Run your polls and Q&A directly from Present mode

Using the control panel in Present mode, you can create new polls or manage your polling and Q&A without a secondary device. This is super helpful if you're a solo presenter and want to run everything from a single screen.

In this article:

Control panel overview

After you open your Present mode, the control panel will appear anytime you move your mouse. You can always click the arrow on the right to move it out of your way.

You can do the following with the Present mode control panel:

• Create polls: Create your own poll from scratch.
   
• Control polls: Start and run any of your existing polls, lock the voting, hide results, or go to the next/previous poll.
   
• Control Q&A: Manage audience questions and even switch to Q&A while a poll is live.
   
• Gear icon options: Copy the slido joining link to quickly send it to your participants, disable Q&A if you only plan to use polls or quizzes, switch to Host mode for additional settings, or adjust Present mode to fit your screen better.
   

Run your polls

To start your poll or quiz, click the green "play" button and the red "stop" button to stop it. You can find the list of your polls under the arrow next to the actual poll number.

Hide the results during the voting so your audience isn’t influenced by others, then reveal them when you’re ready. To prevent the audience from casting any more votes while the results are being discussed, simply lock the voting.

Tip: Use your keyboard to start/stop your polls or run your quiz:

To activate keyboard control, you first need to click at least once anywhere in the Present mode. Use spacebar (or enter) to start a poll and left/right arrows to move back and forth. If a poll is live, hitting the spacebar (or enter) will stop the poll. If your live poll is a quiz, this will activate its next phase.

Control Q&A in Present mode

Switch from polls to Q&A

You can switch from polls to questions or vice versa at anytime. Plus you can highlight the question that's being answered and then send it to the archive. To display the audience questions while a poll is running, navigate to the control panel and simply click Show Q&A.

Highlight questions and mark them as answered

Hover on the question and click the "arrow up" icon to highlight the question and pin it to the top. Afterwards, mark it as answered by hitting the checkmark icon. This will remove the question from Present mode and make room for new ones.

Pro tip: If you ever accidentally mark a question as answered, there’s always the undo option at the top that will restore the last question.

Typing indicator

Slido’s Present mode includes a typing indicator to let you know that people are actively interacting with your live poll or Q&A. This tells you exactly how many people are typing out questions or submitting poll responses in real time. Use this to gauge when it’s safe to move on to other content.

Keyboard shortcuts for controlling Slido from Present mode

Here's a summary of how to use your keyboard to control Slido from Present mode:

• To turn on keyboard controls, enter Present mode and click anywhere on your screen
   
• Space: To start or stop a poll, press the ‘space’ (or enter) key. Once a poll is live, moving the arrow keys will automatically start the next or previous one.
   
• To skip a poll, use the arrow keys. Make sure you do this before a poll is started.
   
• If you have a live quiz, pressing the 'space' (or enter) key will move to quiz's next phase.
   
• To hide the control panel, click on the “X” button. Afterwards, it will appear only when you move your mouse closer to this area.

Curious about more?
 

• Use Slido for remote meetings, classes, events, and webinars