Install the DirectPoll companion app, and what is specific to the Mac once it runs.
Building the deck is platform-independent – result links, the DirectPoll rectangle and its Alt Text work the same everywhere, and are covered in detail in Embed your Poll into a PowerPoint Presentation. This page adds what is specific to the Mac; for Windows, see PowerPoint on Windows.
On the Mac, DirectPoll is a small companion app that runs alongside PowerPoint rather than an add-in inside it. PowerPoint for Mac cannot host the kind of overlay this needs, so the app supplies it from the outside – but from where you sit, it behaves the same: you build the same decks and present them the same way.
That is all the operating there is. DirectPoll stays out of the way until a PowerPoint deck with DirectPoll shapes is open, and it never changes your deck.
A Mac it runs on, permission to talk to PowerPoint and to read your deck, and your deck saved to disk.
Your Mac asks for both automatically, the first time they are needed; the setup window shows the state of each and lets you change it. Both live under System Settings → Privacy & Security:
Neither grant lets DirectPoll read your screen or your keystrokes: it asks PowerPoint which slide is showing, and it reads the .pptx file of the deck you have open. Nothing else.
This is the one habit the Mac asks of you that Windows does not. The companion app reads your markers from the saved .pptx file, not from the PowerPoint window, so:
You are not left guessing about it: the marker panel says Unsaved changes while the deck you have open and the file on disk differ, and warns you outright when slides have been added or removed since the last save – then the slide numbers no longer line up, and the shapes would drive the wrong slides.
Decks on OneDrive or SharePoint need nothing special: DirectPoll finds the copy PowerPoint has open on your Mac and reads that. The one thing it cannot untangle is two open presentations with the same file name – close the one you are not presenting, and the panel says so when that is the case.
DirectPoll checks regularly and downloads nothing on its own – see Keep it up to date for what that means. On the Mac, here is where it shows up.
Three places, so you notice whether or not you have a deck open, and each of them names the version and the size of the download:
DirectPoll shapes is open, a short notice at the top of the marker panel, with a View link straight to the card. It is only there while you edit – never during a show;The menu line and the panel's link both lead to the setup window, and that card is the one place that can show you what is happening: press Download and install, watch the percentage, and Cancel the download stops it with nothing installed. Most updates are a small patch; the size on the button is the size that will actually move.
While you are presenting the button is greyed out and says so – Not while you are presenting. – and it comes back the moment the show ends. Should a show start while a download is already running, the download finishes but nothing is installed: the package waits on your Mac, and the next press installs it without downloading again.
Right away – DirectPoll restarts automatically. Once the download has been verified, the app quits, updates and comes back on its own within a few seconds; the marker panel disappears and returns on the new version. There is nothing to confirm and no need to touch PowerPoint, which keeps running throughout. Until you press the button you keep running the version you have, however many checks have found the update, and a show is never interrupted by one.
Afterwards the setup window's card says Successfully installed 1.2.3. If the install did not complete, the card says that too, with the version this Mac is still running and a Try again button; the version you are running is always shown at the bottom of the setup window.
Where Windows draws its marks directly on the slide, the Mac shows a small floating marker panel beside the PowerPoint window. It lists one row per DirectPoll shape on the slide you are editing, in stacking order, saying what each one will do when you present – or flagging the ones that will not work. The wording is the same on both platforms, and so are the two whole-slide problems it flags: several links on one slide driving the same poll, and more shapes than can be shown at once.
It is the quickest way to check a deck before you present it, and its presence is also how you know the companion app is running. A bar across its top tells you when what it shows may not be what you see – Unsaved changes, a deck whose slide count no longer matches the saved file, or a file DirectPoll was not allowed to read, with a link to the setup window to fix that.
The panel follows the PowerPoint window, appears only while PowerPoint is the app in front, and hides while the window is minimized. Drag it wherever you like – it remembers where you put it relative to the window. The panel appears only for decks that contain DirectPoll shapes; an ordinary presentation gets no panel at all.
Inspector panel while editing in the app's menu switches it on and off, and so does the panel's own close button: close it and it stays away until you switch it on again in the menu.
The results appear on the audience screen, over the slide, and behave exactly as described under While you present: they follow your slides, step out of the way during a transition, are gone on a blanked or ended show, and close by themselves when the show ends.
When you present with Presenter View on a second screen, the marker panel moves onto your screen – never the audience's – and becomes the presenter panel, with the two short lists described under While you present: what is showing on the current slide, and what is coming up on the next one. It mirrors the next-slide preview you already use, so you can see what each slide is about to do to the live poll before you get there. On a single screen there is no Presenter View and no panel: it would sit on top of what the audience sees.
Presenter panel during shows in the app's menu switches it on and off, and the panel's own close button is the same switch – close it during a show and it stays off for the next one until you switch it back on.
One Mac-only courtesy: if you bring another window over the show on the audience screen – a browser, say, to show something else for a moment – the results step aside for it rather than floating on top, and come back when the window is gone. Clicking into another app on your own screen does not count; only a window that actually covers a result does.
These come on top of the general limitations:
DirectPoll shape is placed wrongly here – it is read, but with the group's own coordinates. Grouping is unsupported on both platforms; this is how it fails on the Mac.See the general troubleshooting first – theme, &action, reveal and marker placement are platform-independent. macOS-specific checks:
DirectPoll shapes, it hides when the window is minimized, and it stays away if you closed it – switch it back on with Inspector panel while editing in the app's menu.