Yap
Yap is Keynote that lives over your live camera. You are the background of your own talk, your slides ride on top, and the result exports as both a 16:9 video and a 9:16 Reel.
How Yap works
Create a deck by hand or by talking to the AI builder. Open the AI pane and start building right away. Yap includes free credits out of the box, no key required. When those run out, add your own Anthropic key for unlimited use and full model choice.
Present over your live camera in a window, full screen, or to a projector. Switch layouts mid-talk: Full (camera fills the frame with a content card), PiP (small camera inset over your media), Split (side-by-side), or media-only.
Record one take with a single button. Export when you're done and Yap reframes that take into a 16:9 cut (1920x1080) and a 9:16 cut (1080x1920). One take, two finished files.
What you need
Ready? Install Yap, then build a deck with AI.
Install Yap
Download
Get Yap from cadence.host/yap. Open the disk image, drag Yap into Applications, and launch. Sparkle keeps it updated automatically. To check manually: Yap menu → Check for Updates.
Beta/Gatekeeper: if macOS blocks the first launch, right-click Yap in Applications, choose Open, then Open again. One time only.
First launch
Yap walks you through four screens on first open:
- Welcome. A quick intro. Press Return or click Continue.
- How it works. The core loop: build a deck, present over your camera, export 16:9 and 9:16. Click Continue.
- Turn on your camera. Click Turn on camera and grant access when macOS asks. Skip it here and Yap prompts automatically at the end of onboarding.
- Choose your Yap folder. Default is
~/Documents/Yap. Leave it or pick a different location, then click Let's go.
After onboarding, Yap opens a built-in Welcome deck. Reopen it anytime from Help.
Permissions
Yap asks for each permission the first time it needs it, never all at once.
Requirements
Slides
A slide is the stage. It combines your live camera, one piece of media, a line of text, and one entrance effect into a single moment. Build slides by hand in the editor, or talk to the AI and let it draft the deck for you.
Layouts
The stage morphs between layouts without a cut. You can switch layouts live while presenting. See Present.
Text
Each slide has one text field and a style.
Toggle text off to hide it without losing your copy. Re-enable it any time and the text is still there.
Media
One item per slide.
- Image - Any common format. GIFs loop automatically. PNG transparency lets your camera show through the cutout.
- Web - A live page, fully interactive on air. Click it, scroll it, play video right in the frame.
- Video - Per-slide autoplay and loop toggles.
Text effects
Each slide plays one entrance effect when text appears. Fourteen ship ready: Slam, Scale up, Star Wars, Zoom punch, Bounce, Typewriter, RGB split, Sparkle, Fire, Glitch, Neon, Film burn, and Drip. The default is no animation. See Text effects.
Green screen and captions
Two per-slide toggles.
Green screen cuts you out of your background in real time so media shows behind you. No actual green screen needed.
Live captions print your words as subtitles at the bottom of the frame, on-device with no network required. Turn them on per slide or leave them off.
Both are covered in detail in Present and Live captions.
Build on previous
A slide can inherit the previous slide's media and layout, so you layer only new text on top. The media panel locks; you write the next line, pick its style, and choose how it enters. Like build bullets in Keynote, with your camera and media held.
The slide card shows a small arrow when build on previous is on. Chain as many as you need.
AI deck-builder
Open the AI pane, describe what you want ("make me a 5-slide deck about sleep and creativity"), and Claude builds it live, slide by slide, on the canvas. Each slide appears as it's added or edited. You're watching the real deck take shape, not a preview.
Free to start, then your key
Yap ships with free AI credits. Open the AI pane and start building, no key needed.
When your free credits run out, or if you want unlimited use and full model choice, add your own Anthropic key in the chat pane or in Settings -> AI. With your key, requests go directly to your Anthropic account and are billed there. Get a key at console.anthropic.com.
Free credits use fast, lower-cost models. Your own key unlocks your choice of Sonnet, Opus, or Haiku.
What it can do
- Build a deck from scratch - describe the topic and Claude writes, structures, and lays out every slide.
- Edit what's there - ask it to reorder, rewrite, or cut slides by describing the change.
- Set a slide to a live web page - say "show the Yap homepage on slide 3" and it wires the URL in.
- Generate an illustration - on Apple silicon with Apple Intelligence enabled, Claude can generate an on-device image and drop it onto a slide. Not available on Intel Macs.
- Drop in a reaction GIF - ask for emphasis or humor and it picks one.
Surprise me
Tap Surprise me and Claude picks a topic and builds a full deck with a real arc: hook, build, payoff. It asks one optional question first so you can steer the topic or vibe, then runs. Say "go" to skip straight to the build.
Restore any step
Hover any AI message in the chat and a Restore to here button appears. One click rolls the deck back to exactly that point. When a build finishes, a Ready to play? card appears at the bottom. Tap it to jump straight into Present mode.
What stays private
Only your prompt and slide text go to Claude. Your camera, photos, and recordings never leave your Mac.
With free credits, requests go through Cadence's server (which holds the managed key). With your own key, requests go straight to Anthropic. Either way, only text leaves your Mac.
See Privacy for the full policy.
Text effects
Each slide's text can enter with one effect. It plays once as the text appears, then the text sits clean. What you see live is exactly what lands in your export.
All 14 effects
Applying one
Open Text Effects in the slide inspector (between Text and Media). Tap a row to apply it. The preview plays immediately on the canvas. Tap the same row again to replay. Effects are per slide and do not affect other slides.
Coming soon
Confetti and Shatter appear grayed out at the bottom of the list and are not live yet.
Present
Hit Present and the editor swaps for a full-canvas stage that composites your live camera and the current slide. You are on screen with your content, not beside it.
Start presenting
The menu bar Present menu and the toolbar Present button do the same. Press Esc or the panel's End button to stop.
Window, full screen, or projector
By default, Present opens in a window. To go full screen, choose Present full screen from the toolbar Present dropdown.
Connect a projector and Yap routes the stage there full screen automatically. Your presenter panel stays on your laptop; the projector only sees the stage.
To present over Zoom or Meet: start presenting, share the Yap window in your call, and turn your call's camera off.
If your displays are in Mirror mode (System Settings > Displays), Yap presents in-window instead of routing to the external screen.
Switch layouts live
Presenter panel
A private floating window shows your next-slide preview, the per-slide inspector, camera switcher, and the record buttons. It is excluded from screen capture, so sharing the stage window keeps your controls private. See Record for details on the two record buttons.
Green screen
Toggle Green screen in the slide inspector to cut your background and float you in front of the slide's media. No green backdrop or color keying needed. The segmentation runs on-device.
The cutout shows live. Record This View keeps the cutout in the captured file. Multi-format Export re-composites from your raw camera, so the full background appears there for now.
For the cleanest cutout, use even light and a plain background.
Keyboard controls
Live captions
Live captions transcribe what you say and pin the text as a subtitle at the bottom of your stage. Useful for sound-off viewing or accessibility. Transcription runs on-device through Apple's Speech framework, so your audio stays on your Mac.
Turning them on
Captions are off by default and are a per-slide setting. Open the slide inspector and flip the Live captions toggle. Captions run only while you are presenting a slide that has them enabled, and stop when you move to an uncaptioned slide.
What you need
Record
Both recorders live in the presenter panel. Pick by what you want back: a flexible take to shape later, or a quick baked clip.
Record Session
Record Session captures a raw take (camera + mic + your slide timing) and saves it inside your deck. After the session, export it into a 16:9 video, a 9:16 Reel, or both from a single performance.
The take travels with the deck automatically. Move it, copy it, share it.
When the session stops, press ⇧⌘E (or File > Export Reels & Video) to produce finished clips. See Export.
Record This View
Record This View captures exactly what is on screen to a flat .mp4. Effects are already baked in. One shape, no post-processing.
~/Documents/Yap/Recordings/YAP <date>.mp4If Record This View does nothing the first time, open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording, toggle Yap on, and restart the app.
Which one
Export
Record your session once. From that single take, export a 1920x1080 cut for YouTube or Zoom, a 1080x1920 cut for Reels or TikTok, or both at once.
Reframed, not cropped
For each shape, Yap recomputes the full layout from scratch. Your camera fills its zone, and text resizes to fit. Nothing is letterboxed or center-cropped from the other format.
Export a take
Press Shift-Cmd-E, or go to File > Export Reels & Video. Pick a recorded session, toggle the 16:9 and 9:16 chips (both are on by default), then press Export.
When rendering finishes, Finder opens on the output files. Files land in your Yap Recordings folder, named like:
My Session (16x9).mp4 1920×1080 My Session (9x16).mp4 1080×1920
v1 limits: Green-screen slides export your real background (the live cutout is preview only). Web slides export a snapshot. In-slide video exports a still. For any of those, use Record This View in the presenter panel instead.
Files
Your decks
A deck saves as a .yap file. It looks like a single file in Finder but carries everything inside, including images, videos, and recordings. Hand someone the .yap file and everything travels with it.
Autosave
There is no Save command. Yap saves about a second after you stop editing. Unnamed work lands in Autosave.yap in your Yap folder and is restored on next launch.
Save a Copy (⌘⇧S) prompts for a name, writes to that file, and switches autosave to it going forward. Your original file is left as last saved.
Version history
Yap captures restore points as you work. Save one on demand or browse the full list.
⌥⌘S⌥⌘HVersion History lists every restore point with date, time, and slide count. Hit Restore on any row to roll back. Yap snapshots your current state first, so restoring is undoable.
Where files live
Welcome deck
On first launch, Yap opens a built-in sample deck that walks through layouts, effects, the AI builder, and the record-once / two-cuts workflow. Reopen it any time from Help -> Open the Welcome Deck.
Privacy
Only your prompt and slide text go to Claude. Your camera, photos, and recordings never leave your Mac.
What leaves your Mac
When you use the AI builder, Yap sends your typed message and a text summary of your slides to Claude. With free credits, that request goes through Cadence's server using a managed key, tagged with an anonymous install ID (a random number, no personal info). When you add your own Anthropic key, it goes straight to Anthropic. Either way, only text leaves your Mac.
What never leaves
Your Anthropic key (if you add one) is stored locally on your Mac.
Analytics
Usage analytics are content-free and optional. Each event carries only your anonymous install ID and app version. No deck text, no images, nothing camera-derived. Opt out any time in Settings.
Full policy: cadence.host/yap/privacy.html.
Troubleshooting
Camera preview is black
Grant Camera in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera, then switch back to Yap. No relaunch needed; the camera starts the moment Yap comes to the front.
If another app is already using the camera, quit it and try again.
Turn camera off when backgrounded (Settings → Camera, on by default) pauses the camera when Yap loses focus and resumes it when Yap returns. This is intentional.
Captions are not showing
Both permissions must be enabled:
- System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone, then turn Yap on.
- System Settings → Privacy & Security → Speech Recognition, then turn Yap on.
Either one missing will prevent captions from running.
The AI is not responding
Yap includes free AI credits. Open the AI pane and start building with no key required. When the free credits run out, add your own Anthropic key in Settings → AI (keys start with sk-ant-). If a key is rejected, check the key format and your account credit at console.anthropic.com. Your key is stored locally on your Mac.
Record This View will not start
Grant Screen Recording in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, then try again.
Record Session (the .yapsession format) does not need Screen Recording permission.
Green-screen cutout looks choppy
The cutout is on-device segmentation computed per camera frame in real time. Even lighting and a plain background produce cleaner edges. Close other GPU-heavy apps to free up more GPU for a better frame rate.
The green-screen effect is live-only. Exported MP4s use the raw camera feed. To capture the effect in a recording, use Record This View from the presenter panel.
Common questions
Do I need a green screen? No. Yap uses on-device person segmentation, not chroma key. Any background works.
Does my camera feed go to Claude? No. The AI receives only text: your message plus the deck's text and structure. No video, images, or camera frames are ever sent.
Do I need Apple Silicon? macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later is required for all features. Apple Silicon (with Apple Intelligence enabled) is needed only for on-device AI image generation. Everything else runs on any macOS 26 Mac.
Are captions powered by Apple Intelligence? No. They use Apple's built-in Speech framework, on-device, English only.
Where are my files? Decks are .yap packages saved to ~/Documents/Yap by default (change in Settings → Files). Recordings live inside the .yap package and stay on your Mac.
Why are there two record buttons? Record Session saves raw footage as a .yapsession file inside your deck. Use the Export sheet (⇧⌘E) afterward to render separate 16:9 and 9:16 MP4s from one take. Record This View captures the window as it looks on screen, immediately, to a single MP4 with all effects baked in.
How do I send feedback? Use Send Feedback in the app menu. It opens a form that emails the team directly.
For agents
Yap ships machine-readable docs alongside this page for agents and workflows that consume documentation programmatically.
Machine-readable endpoints
One-line definition
Yap is a local macOS 26 app that composites a live camera feed with slides (text, images, web pages, video) and exports each take as both a 16:9 video and a 9:16 Reel. No server, no cloud sync. The in-app AI builder runs on free credits out of the box; add your own Anthropic key when the free allowance runs out for unlimited use.