Workable alternative to "Presentation Mode" in Intellij and Pycharm

Question

As detailed in this YouTrack issue https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-40008 Presentation Mode is basically a one-way ticket: you can check in but you just can't leave.

One of the "misses" of returning to "normal" mode is that only the Editor panel is displayed: the Explorer, Debugger, etc. are all invisible.

That's a hassle to rectify in real time when presenting to a group of people. When I am actually giving presentations that include code snippet walk-throughs going back and forth between modes is mandatory so then Presentation Mode is a non-starter.

But then what? I code at a small font to view lots of code at one time. This is incompatible with displaying code on a projector. Here are some attempted band-aids:

• Hit Command-+ a few times to increase the font. This does work, but if I switch to another file then I have to repeat that process: the new file does not "inherit" the zoomed-in preference. Then if I switch back to the first file it too has forgotten the zoom. That is very annoying for me and the audience

• Change the Editor|Font .

  

  This is a potentially better solution: at least it does affect all files and is "sticky". However I do find that the optimal resolution often requires tweaking for a given audience due to differing viewer characteristics e.g. Zoom vs Hangouts. So then I end up going into that dialog more than once with a gaggle of folks watching/waiting. Also not ideal.

The behavior is identical across recent releases of both Intellij (Ultimate 2019.3.1) and Pycharm (Ultimate 2019.2.3).

Anyone have alternative/better approaches?

Answer 1

I took a separate approach to fix this actually. When your font size is messed up after exiting the presentation mode, you can do the following.

Go to Preferences and then Appearance. Find the font size of the presentation mode and set it to the default font size (in my case it was 13). Then click Apply and you are good to go. Set the font size to 20 (or any other bigger size) back again for presentation mode.

Answer 2

I setup several Color Scheme Font schemes for desktop/laptop/presentation with different font sizes. I then use Ctrl-~ to quickly switch between them. Doesn't solve all the issues you mentioned, though.