What’s new

Sizes in Styles now match the text toolbar. On a paper-sized page such as Letter or A4, the Styles panel showed a different number from the toolbar for the same text: an imported subheading read 22 pt in Styles and 9.1 pt in the toolbar. Both now show real points. The Font size slider in the toolbar's Settings, the sizes listed in the text-style menu, and the Info tab agree with them too. On screen-sized pages, which have no points, everything keeps showing pixels.

Setting a size sticks. Type 9 into a style's size and it reads back as 9. It used to be rounded to a whole layout unit, so it came back as 9.1 and never matched.

A text's style name is decided one way. Whether a piece of text counts as Display, Heading, Subheading, Paragraph or Small paragraph used to be worked out separately by the toolbar, the Styles panel and the AI assistant, each with its own cut-offs, so the same text could carry different names in different places. They now agree, and respect the style an import gave the text. The toolbar's style button also spells the name out in full, like the Styles panel does, instead of "Subhead", "Body" and "Small".

Ctrl takes a widget out of a selection in decks. Hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) and click a selected widget to remove it from the selection, or hold Ctrl and drag a rectangle across the slide to remove everything it touches. It used to be Alt-click; Alt no longer removes anything, and dragging with Alt still duplicates widgets.

Arrow keys move header and footer widgets. While you are editing the header or footer, select a page number, logo or any other widget and press an arrow key to nudge it one pixel; hold Shift to move it ten. Before, the arrow keys did nothing there.

Paste puts widgets into the header or footer. With the header or footer open for editing, copy a widget (from a slide or from the header or footer itself) and paste it: the copy lands in the header or footer, so it repeats on every slide, instead of being dropped onto the slide behind it. Pictures, videos, text and links you copy from elsewhere paste in as well, and it works even when the slide you are on is locked.

Duplicate works there too. Press Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on a Mac) with a header or footer widget selected and it makes a copy on the same layer. The right-click Paste item works the same way.

Ask the deck assistant to find something online and it now does. With the globe switched on in the message box, a request like "find articles about how LVMH runs its innovation lab" makes the assistant search the web, read what it needs, and put the finding into your slides. Each search shows as a step in the chat ("Searching the web"), so you can see it happened. Before this, the assistant could only look for photos and answered "I can't search the web".

Links come from real results, never from memory. When you ask for links to articles or sources, the assistant adds only addresses that a search returned or that you gave it, copied exactly.

Switch the globe off and it tells you so. With the web off, a request to look something up gets a plain answer that the web is off and where to turn it on, instead of a guess.

Everyday lookups are free; research uses a stronger search and costs credits. Quick lookups cost nothing extra. Ask the assistant to research something, or start your message with /research, and it uses a stronger search that reads real pages. Each of those searches costs about 10 credits and appears on your usage page as "Web search". If your balance can't cover it, the assistant carries on with the free search instead of stopping.

Connectors have their own place in the + menu. The + menu in the composer now lists Google Drive and Miro under a Connectors heading, each with its own logo, apart from Upload files and From Library.

Every deck source has its own colors. Create a deck from a source now shows PDF, PowerPoint, Word, InDesign, your website and your brand in their own colors, alongside Google Slides and Miro, so you pick a source by recognizing it. The Deck suggestion on Home names Google Slides and Miro boards among the places a deck can start from.

A Miro board shows its name. In Generate Deck, a Miro board's tile now carries the board's name under the Miro logo instead of "Miro board".

Starting a deck again no longer looks dead. Closing the review of a PDF, PowerPoint, Word, InDesign or Miro import keeps it open as a notice at the corner of the screen, and asking for Create a deck from Home used to do nothing until you refreshed the page. It now brings that review back and says the import is still open.

A reminder to upgrade, where you start. An account that hasn't upgraded sees a slim strip across the top of the Home composer saying what upgrading adds, with an Upgrade button that opens the plans. When credits are running low it leads with that. Dismiss it and it stays away for a while.

See the board while you pick. Pick assets now opens a larger window that draws the board the way it sits on Miro: its frames where they are, and every picture and PDF at its own place and size. Drag to move around, hold Ctrl (or ⌘) and scroll to zoom, click a picture to pick it, and hold Shift and drag to pick several at once. The list on the left jumps to any frame. A Grid view shows everything frame by frame as compact previews instead, and the Pictures and Files buttons narrow what you see.

PDFs show their first page. Drawings and documents on a board now appear as a preview of the PDF's first page, with its page count, so a set of sheets that all share one file name can be told apart at a glance.

Videos and documents come in too. Pick assets now lists the videos and the Word, PowerPoint, Excel and text files on a board, and brings them into your deck with your pictures and PDFs. A board with no frames is simply its pictures and files: after you choose it as a Miro source, Pick pictures and files opens them wherever they sit on the board, next to using the board's text as the brief.

Reading a board keeps you where you are. Choosing a Miro board now opens a window with a progress bar and a Cancel button, in place of a small notice in the corner, and the page behind it can't be clicked until the board has been read or you cancel. Clicking outside Pick assets no longer closes it and loses your picks. Opening Pick assets for a board you just attached no longer reads the board a second time.

The screen dims evenly. When Pick assets or the reading window opens over Generate Deck, the whole screen, the sidebar included, dims to the same shade.

Dropping a video onto a slide now says what it is doing. Before the file starts sending, the app checks your storage and gets an upload address. During that short wait the video's overlay used to sit at 0%, which looked stuck. It now shows a spinning ring and "Preparing upload…", then switches to the percentage once the upload begins, and to "Processing…" when it finishes.

A short balance no longer blocks Deep research. If you have enough credits for the first search and the brief but not for the second look at what it missed, Deep research now runs the first search, writes the brief from it, and says it skipped the second search. When the brief is ready, it asks you to add credits and tells you what a full run needs, so the next one can include the second look. With less than that, it still asks you to add credits before it starts.

The review step fits a laptop, a tablet and a phone. After Generate Deck writes your outline, the review window now adapts to the screen. On a phone it fills the screen, with the slide first, a row of thumbnails under it, and the deck settings below, while Back and Create deck stay at the bottom. On narrower screens the chat and the outline take turns behind an Outline and Chat switch. On a wide screen nothing changes.

Duplicate from inside the editor. If someone opens a deck they can view but not edit, and its owner has allowed copies, they can now make their own editable copy without leaving the deck. A Duplicate button sits in the header next to Share, and the View only badge and the message that appears when you try to edit both offer it too. The copy opens in the same tab, ready to edit, and the original is not changed.