React Viewer Overview

pptx-react-viewer is a React 18 or 19 component for rendering and editing .pptx files. It is built on pptx-viewer-core and includes the toolbar, inspector panels, slide canvas, animation engine, presentation mode, real-time collaboration, and export.

What it provides

Capability	Summary
Viewer	Renders slides with 16 element types (shapes, text, images, tables, 23 chart types, SmartArt, connectors, media, ink, OLE, 3D models, zoom).
WYSIWYG editor	Insert / move / resize / delete elements, inline text editing, style editing, slide management - gated behind canEdit.
Presenter	Fullscreen slideshow with 39 animation presets and 26 motion paths, 57 transitions (including morph), speaker notes, presenter view with timer.
Export	PNG / SVG / PDF / GIF / video / JSON slide export, plus save-as PPTX. See Export.
Collaboration	Real-time multi-user editing via Yjs CRDT with presence tracking, remote cursors, and avatars. See Collaboration.

Element coverage

For a precise list of what the underlying parser/serializer supports - and what is approximated - see Limitations.

Installation

npm i pptx-react-viewer

The core engine (pptx-viewer-core) is bundled in, so you don't install it separately; add it only if you also want to use the framework-agnostic engine directly.

Peer dependencies (you provide these in your app):

• react and react-dom ^18.2 or ^19 (both majors are covered by their own CI test run)
• framer-motion, lucide-react, react-icons
• jspdf, jszip, fast-xml-parser
• i18next, react-i18next

Optional dependencies (only needed for specific features):

• three - GLB/GLTF 3D models plus opt-in 3D SmartArt and 3D chart renderers
• yjs, y-websocket - real-time collaboration (relay transport)
• y-webrtc - serverless peer-to-peer collaboration

TIP

3D and collaboration features degrade gracefully. Without three, 3D models fall back to their poster image. Without yjs/y-websocket, the viewer runs in single-user mode.

Import paths

The package exposes two entry points (from package.json exports):

// Root entry - viewer, theme utilities, renderToCanvas
import { PowerPointViewer } from 'pptx-react-viewer';

// Viewer sub-entry - same component PLUS the opt-in hooks/components surface
import { PowerPointViewer } from 'pptx-react-viewer/viewer';

Both entries export PowerPointViewer. The pptx-react-viewer/viewer entry additionally exposes the opt-in, tree-shakeable hooks and collaboration components (see Hooks). Use the root entry for the common case.

Rendering philosophy: CSS, not Canvas

Slides are rendered with CSS positioning and transforms (scaled HTML/SVG), not an HTML Canvas. This provides:

• Crisp text at any zoom level
• Native browser text selection and accessibility
• DOM-based interaction (click, drag, resize hit-testing)
• Standard CSS effects (shadows, gradients, borders)

The tradeoff is that some visual effects are approximated (backdrop-filter, mix-blend-mode, CSS 3D, path gradients). Raster export goes through html2canvas, which has its own constraints. The full list lives in Limitations.

Hooks-based architecture

The component is a forwardRef orchestrator. Its logic is decomposed into 80+ custom hooks composed inside PowerPointViewer.tsx; the visual components are almost purely presentational. Most hooks are internal architecture, but a curated, tree-shakeable subset is exported from pptx-react-viewer/viewer for advanced integrations. See Hooks for which are public API.

Key exports

Export	Kind	Purpose
PowerPointViewer	component	The main viewer/editor component.
PowerPointViewerProps	type	Props interface. See Props.
PowerPointViewerHandle	type	Imperative ref API. See Handle.
renderToCanvas	function	Render a DOM element to a Canvas with an oklch-colour workaround. See Export.
getAnimationInitialStyle	function	Compute the pre-animation initial CSS for an animation preset.
ViewerTheme, ViewerThemeColors	type	Theme configuration types. See Theming.
defaultThemeColors, defaultRadius	const	Built-in dark-theme defaults.
themeToCssVars, defaultCssVars	function	Convert a theme to --pptx-* CSS vars.
ViewerThemeProvider, useViewerTheme	provider/hook	Advanced theme context.

Next steps

• Getting Started - a minimal working example.
• Component Props - the complete PowerPointViewerProps reference.
• Imperative Handle - the ref API.
• Theming - colours, radius, CSS vars, providers.
• Hooks - architecture and the public hook surface.
• Export - PNG/PDF/SVG/GIF/video and the html2canvas pipeline.
• Collaboration - Yjs co-editing and presence.