Getting Logitech Presenter R800 Working with Keynote on Mac

Recently I attempted to get my Logitech Presenter R800 working with Keynote on my Mac. I swiftly discovered that although it works with PowerPoint for Mac out-of-the-box, in Keynote the ‘start/stop presentation’ and ‘blank presentation screen’ keys didn’t work.

After a bit of investigation, I found the solution, which was to use KeyRemap4MacBook. The presenter tool behaves like a USB keyboard, and uses  for blank screen, and F5 for show/hide presentation. I installed KeyRemap4MacBook, and installed a private.xml based on the one on this page for a slightly different presentation tool. I’ve uploaded the one I used to github. Tip: Don’t forget to read the KeyRemap4MacBook manual. You need to explicitly reload the private.xml once it’s in place (you’ll also need to rename it to that name when you download from github), as well as tick the ‘R800 for Keynote’ checkbox on the Change Key tab in the KeyRemap4MacBook settings.

Update 2015-09-16: KeyRemap4MacBook has been renamed ‘Karabiner’. It can also be installed using Homebrew Cask using brew cask install karabiner. Also note that the URL in the post above for my personal private.xml has been updated due to more stuff being incorporated into it.