Invite participants to your presentation

Joining as a participant? Scan the presenter’s QR code, or enter the access code at audience.ahaslides.com. You don’t need an account, and you’re only asked for a name on quiz slides, in Q&A or feedback, or when the host uses Collect audience info. To get your participants to start submitting responses to your slides, you need to share the presentation with them. There are two ways to do that:

1. A unique URL (AKA ‘access link’ or ‘access code’) that participants type into their phones.
2. A unique QR code that participants can scan with their phone cameras.

​

Do participants need an AhaSlides account to join?

No. Participants do not need an AhaSlides account and don’t have to sign up or log in to join your presentation. They simply open the join URL or scan the QR code on their phone, enter their name if you ask for it, and they’re in. The only exception is if you’ve deliberately turned on audience verification for your presentation — for example, to restrict access to specific people. In that case, participants are asked to verify before joining. See Participant verification and Using audience authentication for how that works.

​

Does the presentation time out, or do participants have to rejoin?

No. There is no time limit on joining and no idle timeout, and participants who stay in the same browser on the same device keep their details and progress. See Does the presentation time out, or do participants have to rejoin?.

​

Sharing the URL/join link or access code

Participants join in the web browser of any device — a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer — in one of three ways: they scan your presentation’s QR code with their phone camera (see Sharing the QR code below), they type the join URL (ahaslides.com/ followed by your access code), or they go to audience.ahaslides.com and enter the access code there. This URL and access code can be found on the joining instruction bar at the top of every slide in your presentation. You can view it on the slide canvas in the presentation editor, and it will also be visible during your presentation. The access code is the string after ahaslides.com/ in the URL.

​

Hide controls and status

You can hide the presenter’s controls and status bar so your audience sees only your slide content. This hides three things at once: the joining instruction bar at the top, the control bar at the bottom, and the live participant/voter count — the counter that shows how many people have responded. Turn it on in either place:

• Before you present — open Settings, go to the Advanced tab, and tick “Hide controls and status”.
• While presenting — click the menu button (the ☰ icon) in the control bar, open Display, and choose “Hide controls and status”.

Once enabled, the instruction bar, the control bar and the participant/voter count fade out when your mouse is inactive. Move your mouse to bring them back. Your participants can also type the join URL into their phone’s browser. Once the page has loaded on their phone, they will have joined your presentation. If the participants have the access code, they can go here to enter the code and join your presentation: audience.ahaslides.com You can also find your URL access code by clicking Share in the top-right of the editor and choosing Get audience link. You will find a link under Audience can join at. You can click the Copy button here to copy the code to your clipboard. A host-led quiz only opens once you start presenting, so anyone who joins early sees a message asking them to wait. If you want people to take it in their own time, use a self-paced presentation instead.

​

Changing your URL access code

A custom join link is the join link of your presentation with an access code that you choose. To change the access code, click Share, choose Get audience link, then click the code under Audience can join at. The access code belongs to the whole presentation. A single slide, such as one Poll slide, does not have its own join link or access code. You can also customise your URL code. Simply click the code within the box to change it. A customised access code must:

• Be unique (it must not be the same as any other AhaSlides presentation’s code)
• Be 3 to 10 characters long
• Contain only letters and numbers

Once you’ve updated your code and it’s been accepted, click the ‘Save’ button.

​

If your access code is already in use

An access code can be used by only one presentation at a time. If you try to save a code that another presentation is already using, AhaSlides won’t accept it and will tell you the code is already taken. That code only becomes available again when the presentation currently holding it is either:

• Deleted, or
• Changed to a different code.

Until one of those happens, no other presentation can take that code. Access codes are unique across the whole of AhaSlides, not just within your own account, so the presentation holding the code you want may belong to a different account entirely — including another account of your own. Deleting a presentation releases its access code straight away. Bear in mind that if you later restore that presentation from your trash, it comes back with a newly generated code rather than its original one.

​

Your permanent access code

From Get audience link in the Share menu of the presentation editor, you can also copy your permanent access code. This long URL code will also provide your participants access to your presentation, but this link cannot be changed. No matter how many times you change your short access code, your long URL code will remain the same. To get the link, click the three-dot icon next to the Copy button, which will reveal the Copy permanent link.

​

Start presenting

Select Present at the top right of the editor, then choose Present from the current slide, Present from the first slide or Present with Backstage.

​

Sharing the QR code

There are three ways to share the unique QR code of your presentation with your participants: the presentation side column, a QR code slide, and a downloaded image of the QR code. To share or print the QR code before the event without letting people in early, keep the presentation in private mode. Switching between private and public does not change the QR code or the join link. Anyone who scans the QR code while the presentation is private sees a message that the presentation is in private mode, and sees your slides once you switch to public.

​

Presentation side column

When you start presenting, a join panel with your QR code and access code slides in on the left of the slide. Click anywhere in the top bar (or press ‘Q’ on your keyboard) to show or hide it at any time. The panel stays there while you present your slides (until you manually close it), allowing participants to scan the code with their phone cameras at any time during your session.

​

QR code slide

You can create a slide in your presentation that reveals the QR code to your audience when you arrive at that slide. Click the add-slide icon, then select ‘QR Code’. You can drag this slide to the start or near the start of your presentation so that your participants can join it immediately. The QR Code slide is an extra, full-slide display of the QR code. Adding a QR Code slide does not remove the joining instruction bar from your other slides. There is no setting that hides the joining instruction bar on one slide only: to hide the joining instruction bar for the whole presentation, open Settings, go to the Advanced tab and tick Hide instruction bar.

​

Download the QR code as an image

To save the QR code of your presentation as a picture, open the Share menu in the AhaSlides editor and choose Get audience link. The Get audience link panel shows the QR code with the option to download the QR code. The download is a PNG image file of your QR code. You can insert the PNG image on a PowerPoint slide, print the PNG image or email the PNG image.

​

Can participants share the join link or QR code?

Yes. Participants can open the menu on their screen and choose Share QR code to see the join code and QR code, copy the link, download the QR code or share it. There’s no setting to remove this option. To control who can join, give each participant their own passcode with audience authentication. It isn’t available on every plan; if yours doesn’t include it, you’ll be prompted to upgrade.

​

Why can’t some participants join and see “Participant limit exceeded”?

The participant limit comes from the plan of the account that is presenting, not the presentation’s owner. See Why can’t some participants join and see “Participant limit exceeded”?.

​

Can I run more than one presentation at the same time?

Running more than one live presentation at the same time is technically possible, but we can’t guarantee a smooth live experience or stable performance when you do. For the most reliable session, present one presentation at a time. If several people need to run the same presentation at the same time, in different rooms or groups, add each of them as a collaborator with the Presenter role. Each presenter gets their own join link and their own session report. Have a question? Contact our support team — if you’re logged in, use the chat bubble in the bottom-right of your dashboard; otherwise contact us here or email hi@ahaslides.com. Want to connect with other users? Join the AhaSlides community to share tips, request features, and see how others engage their audiences.