Install SlydeForge

🎯 New generation engine — the highlight of this release

• The AI writes, SlydeForge lays out: the AI now only writes the content; the layout is computed from your brand kit (grid, typography, measured contrast, no overflowing text). Measured on an 8-slide presentation: 13.6 s instead of 152.7 s, about 17 times fewer tokens, no layout defect detected (24 before).
• Your brand kit's slide templates guide the result in every format (16:9, square, portrait) and are preferred by the plan.
• Visible progress: the plan's titles, then each slide, appear as they arrive, at no extra cost.
• A complete result from the very first generation (checkboxes in "New from a brief"): transitions and animations (free, no AI call) and speaker notes.
• Your brief is really used: attached images are placed on slides (portraits on a "team" slide), web links cited are actually read as sources, and royalty-free photos are kept far more often.

✨ New

• Two-step Formatting: other structures, then bold art directions (value-based color coding, title band, depth, status icons…) as real previews. ✨ Refine bar for a free request or to combine two proposals, 🔍 Enlarge to compare full size, Create a new slide checkbox to keep the original.
• Challenge asks questions first: a diagnosis, then up to 3 one-click questions before rewriting the slide; about 70% fewer tokens, and figures or dates lost or added are flagged.
• Photo button (/suggest_image): up to 6 royalty-free photos already built into the slide, with a readable credit.
• AI-generated images: AI image button (/generate_image) and a "Generate AI images" checkbox in "New from a brief", with an upfront cost warning (requires a configured image generation service).
• Search the whole presentation (Ctrl+F): slides, tables, charts, timelines and notes, with highlighting, a counter and a list of matches.
• Local model check (Ollama…): "Test connection" explains in plain words whether the model is suitable (speed, thinking, vision) and how to pick another one.
• Zoom in the before/after preview: click an image to compare full size.

🐛 Fixes

• Generation stuck for minutes with a local "reasoning" model (gemma4, qwen3…): thinking is now turned off automatically (8-slide presentation in 19.8 s instead of 53.9 s).
• Spell check: the chosen correction replaces exactly the misspelled word, and clicking in the text works normally again.
• "Team" slide left empty despite attached photos; extra empty circle in a brand-kit agenda.
• Only one art direction offered on a slide based on a brand-kit template.
• A Challenge rewrite can no longer make the slide poorer (lost photo, icons or cards) without warning you.
• Numbers better centered in badges; table and chart text more faithful on screen; bullets properly spaced in the PowerPoint export.

✨ New

• Tables: per-axis borders and custom sizing — row and column separators can now be shown independently (horizontal only, vertical only, both, or neither), and multiple selected columns or rows can be resized at once to a precise width or height.
• Hyperlinks now exported to PowerPoint: text carrying a link stays clickable during the presentation, not just in the SlydeForge preview.

🐛 Fixes

• Multi-series charts turning monochrome, or unreadable text on a dark background: each series gets its own distinct color again (preview and PowerPoint export), and pie chart label text now automatically switches between white and black based on the background color.
• Double-clicking an element (timeline, table, chart…) sometimes ALSO opened the slide background properties — fixed.
• The custom color picker would sometimes reopen itself right after confirming a choice — fixed.
• Buying a paid marketplace component: now redirects straight to the slydeforge.com pricing page, without asking for an email address inside the app.

The important fix in this version

In some cases, after clicking "Restart now" to apply an update, SlydeForge
would close its window but never relaunch into the new version — no error
message, the update just stayed "pending" indefinitely.

The cause: the very last technical step, in charge of switching over to
the new version behind the scenes, was launched in a way that prevented it
from running correctly on some Windows machines.

This is now fixed: restarting after an update now reliably applies the new
version.

The important fix in this version

On some machines, an automatic update could get stuck partway: SlydeForge
would download the new version correctly, but the installation never got
finalized — no error message, just a version number that never changed
after restarting.

The cause: a small technical step, in charge of finishing the
installation behind the scenes, contained accented characters that Windows
could misinterpret in some cases — a small detail, but enough to silently
block the entire update.

This is now fixed: updates now apply reliably, every time.

Also in this version

• New dedicated window for changing the language (Settings > Language…).
• Small translation improvement in the components marketplace.

More reliable automatic updates

The update process has been overhauled: the new version is now downloaded
and prepared separately, then applied in one go when SlydeForge closes. Two
separate issues could previously prevent an update from applying correctly
(an installation left half-updated, or an update that never finalized at
all) — both are now fixed.

New language selection window

Settings > Language… now opens a dedicated window, with flags 🇫🇷 🇬🇧,
making it easier to switch between French and English.

Small improvements

- The network-usage disclosure text for interactive marketplace components
(poll, post-its, webcam, external app) now displays in English for
English-speaking users, instead of staying in French.

🎯 AI generation quality — the highlight of this release

• Overlap-proof guarantee: text can no longer be hidden behind a misplaced decoration (a color band, a shape) — content now always renders on top, regardless of what caused the overlap in the first place.
• List bullets always precisely aligned with their text, even when a neighboring title grows and shifts the rest of the layout.
• Titles in narrow columns (portrait/square formats): the required height is now computed with word boundaries in mind, so text no longer overflows into the next element.
• Theme decorations stay true at every size: bands, shapes and ellipses no longer distort when generating in a format different from the one the theme was originally designed for.
• No more failed generations on icon-heavy slides: a stronger conciseness rule prevents JSON truncation, even without a custom theme template.
• Reliable AI usage tracking: the token counter now reflects the full prompt sent (theme, asset catalog, conversation history…) on top of the model's response — no more mismatch with the subscription usage gauge.

✨ New

• Slide background color, settable directly, no need to go through an image.
• Royalty-free images (Unsplash/Pexels): status now visible in the chat (enabled, no provider configured, or search result) — diagnosed at a glance instead of guessing why no photo showed up.
• Redesigned AI onboarding screen: clearer layout, distinct icons per free-tier engine (Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter), shown again on every launch until an AI is configured.
• New "SlydeForge API" AI backend and a dedicated Subscription menu, for users with an active SlydeForge subscription — both optional, with no impact for anyone already using their own API key.

🐛 Fixes

• A project's placeholder title (generated from a brief) could cut a word in half — fixed.
• The "Slide background" dialog only offered an image, never a color, even though rendering already supported one.

New

• New marketplace component: External App — embed a website, a file (Excel, PDF...), or a Windows application directly into a slide. Perfect for live demos without leaving your presentation.
• Expanded royalty-free image search — alongside Unsplash, SlydeForge now also queries Pexels. The AI assistant can suggest a relevant photo on its own while generating a slide, with photographer credit added automatically.

Improvements

• SlydeForge now ships with its own Python runtime — no separate Python install needed on your machine.
• Several stability fixes for the External App component (a file staying locked after a presentation, window positioning).

✨ New

• Interactive presentation components (Insert > Interactive menu): a slide can now carry one or more components activated during the slideshow, with a contextual toolbar (shown only when relevant, no permanent bar).
• Built-in whiteboard: pen, highlighter, shapes, and text annotations drawn live over the displayed slide, with its own undo/redo for the presentation session.
• Interactive components marketplace: Poll/Rating and Post-its/Zones install from slydeforge.com, each component clearly stating its network usage before install. The Poll relays audience votes via QR code; Post-its stay fully local.
• Poll: customizable placement and colors — drag-and-drop the results card's position/size, and pick background/text colors (theme color or custom).
• Active-components bar above the canvas: Configure / Enable-Disable / Remove for every component placed on the displayed slide, all undoable.
• Simplified presentation navigation: optional ‹ › buttons to move between slides, with a choice at slideshow launch (always visible, only on interactive slides, or never) remembered from one session to the next.
• Guided dependency installation: a marketplace component that needs an extra Python package (e.g. qrcode for Poll) now offers to install it automatically, with explicit confirmation.
• Enriched user guide: a new section dedicated to interactive components, plus a search field to find a topic faster.

🐛 Fixes

• Combining two interactive components on the same slide didn't work — only the first one actually showed up during presentation. Both now run at the same time.
• Poll component: layout fixed (results card now centered instead of stretched), and a clear warning now appears when the service is unreachable instead of a silent "0 responses".
• The automatic missing-dependency install offer didn't trigger when installing a component from a local file (only from the online catalog) — fixed.
• User guide table-of-contents links didn't always land on the right section (incorrect anchor) — fixed for both French and English.