Content generated by an LLM with human direction.

Sync and link

The rule

Two elements on different slides can be related in two — and only two — ways, and they mean different things:

• Sync = the same element, shown on several slides. Edit it once and every copy updates: same text, same picture, same position. This is for information you want to repeat — a running title, a logo, a standing example you keep referring back to.
• Link = an animation. The same-looking element sits at a different position on each slide, and the presenter glides it from one spot to the next as you advance. This is for build-ups and motion. The two elements stay independent — only their movement is tied together.

A short way to remember it: sync unifies, link animates.

The most important consequence: position follows sync, not link. Synced copies always share a position — move one, they all move. A link never moves anything on its own; it only animates between positions you set yourself.

How you make each one

• Sync comes from duplicating a slide (right-click a slide thumbnail → Duplicate, or Cmd/Ctrl+D on the thumbnail). Every element on the copy is synced to its original. They're now one thing on two slides.
• Link comes from the "L" button on a selected element ("link to an element on another slide"). It opens a picker; click the target on another slide and the two are linked for animation. Linking is non-destructive — it never merges or changes content, it only sets up the animation.

Making an animation (the one workflow worth memorising)

Because synced copies share a position, you can't animate them directly. The move is: duplicate → free → move.

1. Duplicate the slide so the element is on both (synced, same spot).
2. On the second slide, select the element and click the "S" badge to Free Position — it stops being synced but stays part of the animation.
3. Drag it to its new spot. In presenter mode, advancing the slide now animates the element from the first position to the second.

The badges

Select an element and two little badges may appear:

• S (sync). Green = synced; click to free this copy's position. Grey = either freed (click to re-sync) or animation-linked-but-not-synced (click to promote the link to a sync — see below).
• A (animation). Purple = animated; click to unlink. Grey = click to re-link.

Promoting a link to a sync

A link is just animation; if you decide two animation copies should actually be the same element (mirror, not motion), select one and click its grey "S" badge to promote. The one you click becomes the master — the others become identical to it. This is destructive (the copies' separate positions and content are discarded in favour of the master's), so it asks for confirmation. There's no automatic reverse; sync is a deliberate step up from link, never a side effect of it.

If the linked copies are notebooks with different recordings, promoting can't keep both — so instead of a plain confirm you get a chooser: each copy is shown with a one-line summary of its recording, and the one you pick becomes the master (its recording is kept; the others are discarded). This is how you "sync notebooks": link them, then promote and choose which recording the unified notebook should carry.

Copy and paste

Copy an element (Cmd/Ctrl+C) and where you paste decides the relationship:

• Paste on a different slide → the copy is linked to the original (animation), unless the original is part of a sync group, in which case the paste joins that sync group (another synced copy).
• Paste on the same slide → a plain independent copy. (You can't animate between two things on one slide, so there's nothing to link.)
• Cmd/Ctrl+D duplicates an element in place as an independent copy.

Why this design

Most "same element across slides" features conflate two genuinely different intentions — repeat this and animate this — into one confusing toggle. Splitting them keeps each predictable: a synced title never drifts out of place, and an animation never silently rewrites your content. The "free to animate, promote to unify" path lets you move between the two on purpose, without either one happening by accident.

(For the under-the-hood model — one storage row + slide references, how it survives save/reopen — see the developer note docs/sync-and-link.md.)