Laser Pointer

The Laser Pointer mode gives you a temporary laser trail for drawing attention while presenting or walking a group through a diagram. Choose it from the mode picker at the top of the floating palette, or press K.

How it works

Move the cursor to leave a glowing trail that fades on its own. It is purely for emphasis: it draws nothing permanent and changes none of your elements, so you can gesture freely without altering the diagram.

Setting up your pen

While the mode is active a Laser panel sits under the palette, with four settings over a live preview of the stroke:

• Width — Fine, Medium, or Bold.
• Colour — your own participant colour (the default) or one of eight presets, for when your colour doesn't read against the diagram you are presenting.
• Trail — how long the line lingers: Quick, Normal, or Long. Long turns the pointer into something you can draw a shape with.
• Effect — Beam (a clean line), Glow (a soft halo that survives a projector), Comet (tapers away behind the tip), or Spark (a dotted trail).

Everyone in the room sees your pen, not their own default, and the settings are remembered on this device for next time.

The laser inside a presentation

The laser is not only an editor tool. While you are running a slide deck, press L to arm it over the slide and L again to put it away. It is one of only two tools reachable from a presentation (the spotlight is the other), because pointing at the diagram is the one thing a presenter needs to do to it and neither tool can change it.

While the laser is armed, clicking draws rather than advancing the slide. The keys and the buttons in the presenter's controls still move the deck. Leaving the presentation gives your tool back the way you found it.

When it is unavailable

The Laser Pointer is disabled on an empty canvas. Add an element and the mode becomes available again.