Using the Surface pen as presenter


If you have a Surface and already use it for presentations, you may have wondered if it is possible to use the Surface pen to control the slides. The idea is to use the top button of the pen which is connected via Bluetooth with the device. Pressing this button once proceeds one step forward in the presentation and pressing it twice goes one step back. I tried exactly this and here I want to show the solution which worked for me.

First, if you search the web for this topic you will find already many solutions. I tried a few but unfortunately, none of them worked for me, so I played a little bit around until I had, at least for me, a working solution. I already used it in two presentations without any problems on a Surface Pro 3 with the pen from the Surface Pro 4. A small drawback though: pressing the pen's button results in a low physical clicking sound. However, I didn't find it disturbing during the presentation. You need to test it yourself and decide if you are comfortable with it.

Like many other solutions, I use AutoHotkey which provides a scripting framework for Windows. By writing small scripts it is e.g. possible to re-map the functionality of some keys. The nice thing is that pressing the surface button acts as pressing a special control key:

  • F18: click and hold the button for a few seconds. Defaults to Cortana search.
  • F19: double-click on the button. Defaults to open the ink board with a screenshot of your current desktop.
  • F20: single-click on the button. Defaults to open OneNote.

The following script implements the requirements from the beginning without using the F18 button (but feel free to do with it whatever you want):


#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn  ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

#F19::                                       ; Double click
   Send {left down}
   Sleep 50 ms
   Send {left up}
return

#F20::                                       ; One click
   Send {Right down}
   Sleep 50 ms
   Send {Right up}
return


As you can see, moving forward in the presentation is achieved by emulating a press of the right arrow key respectively left arrow key for going one step back. The sleep command is necessary for me; otherwise, I encountered some strange behaviour. Without sleeping also the left windows key is sometimes pressed and stays pressed for whatever reason1. When you now press some other key on your keyboard it executes the corresponding windows command, since the windows key stays pressed until you manually press the windows key again. I tested this once in presentation mode in PowerPoint and it worked a few slides but then suddenly it jumped to the end of the presentation. However, so far I had no problems when there is a small sleep between the key commands like in the script.

To use this script, download and install AutoHotkey, create a new script file, e.g. SP3_pen_presentation.ahk, fill it with the content from above and run the script via the context menu or the command line


start "" "YOUR\PATH\AutoHotkeyU64.exe" SP3_pen_presentation.ahk

If no error occurs, you should now be able to control your presentation with the top button of your Surface pen.


1. The problem seems to be known but no satisfactory answer up to the current date.