How to disable the exit presentation button on a Logitec R400 wireless presenter

In this article I reviewed the Logitech wireless presenter. It is in my opinion the best remote control to use with Keynote. That particular Logitech remote has been replaced by the new Logitech R400 which doesn’t feel as robust, the main buttons are smaller, and it still has the 2 smaller buttons, one which completely exits out of your keynote presentation! The last thing you want is to press the wrong button and be taken out of your keynote back to the desktop.

The smaller two buttons can be easily disabled with a knife. This article describes how to disable the extra 2 buttons. It really is a simple procedure and doesn’t even require any soldering!

What you need:

– A logitec wireless presenter R400

– A small phillips head screwdriver

– A small knife with a sharp point.

step1 — Step 1. Remove the battery cover, remove the sticker that covers the screws underneath the batteries, and undo the 2 screws.

step2 — Step 2. Prise off the back cover with a screwdriver or knife.

step3 — Step 3. The buttons are a small dome shaped piece of metal held on with a clear plastic contact. Carefully cut the clear sticky tape covering around the bottom 2 buttons with a knife.

step4 — Step 4. Now you can simply remove the dome shaped part of the button, it is only held on by the tape.

step5 — Step 5. Here is what it looks like with the button removed. Do this for both the bottom 2 buttons and then reassemble the remote.

If you also want to disable the laser pointer you can do the same with the top button, the fifth button.

When you reassemble the remote control it will look identical from the outside, but when you press the smaller 2 buttons at the bottom they will no longer click and they will no longer do anything.

So now you have a very reliable Keynote remote control that will just move the presentation one slide forward or backwards with no way to accidently exit from the presentation!

Posted

March 29, 2012

hardware, mods, presentation, presentations

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10 responses to “How to disable the exit presentation button on a Logitec R400 wireless presenter”

dude
April 28, 2014
dude, this is just so not representative. and disable laserpointer? so i need a 2nd pointer to show aspects in slides? no blankscreen function? ever waited the session start but notebook already plugged in and couldnt check files/web/mail without involving whole audience?
poor review…
Reply
1. Wayne
  April 30, 2014
  It’s not disabling the pointer – unless you want to. It just disables the button that completely exits from the presentation. You can leave the blank screen button there if you want. But thanks for the feedback – I might change the article title if you found it misleading.
  Reply
  1. Rich
    April 23, 2022
    Update: On the R400, the bottom right button just blanks the screen black, it’s an on/off switch that brings you back to the same slide you were last on when turned off. Probably don’t need to disable. The bottom left button is (according to Logitech manual) a Start Slideshow button. If you are in Presenter mode in Powerpoint and hit this by accident, you exit presenter mode most ungraciously. Thanks for the tip. (FWIW if you try to get it to ‘play slideshow’ in a Photos.app slideshow, it doesn’t – it instead exits you from a playing slideshow (like hitting the esc key would) and will not start playing a selected slideshow project. Maybe a little Keyboard Maestro key mapping magic could cure this.
Bash
November 11, 2014
I hardly think that “improve your Logitech R400” is hardly the right headline for this article because users who do not use keynote may find the buttons quite useful.
My guess is that this is a mod which may or may not be benificial for some small group of users… but those may as well buy a cheaper device which don’t have the extra buttons.
Reply
1. Wayne
  November 12, 2014
  I found it to be an improvement as I use Keynote and that’s about all I use my remote for – going to the next slide. We use it at church. So I need a reliable remote, not a cheap one. But I don’t want people to accidentally exit out of the presentation mid song! Thanks for the feedback though and I’ve changed the article heading to better represent what the article is saying.
  Reply
Fantastico!
September 29, 2015
Great work around, just got the BeBoncool knockoff of this remote and just like you described, I was able to remove the exit presentation usability from the remote. Outright improvement over original usage when dealing with clueless presenters.
Reply
Max
December 1, 2015
Thanks a lot for this really helpful article!
Reply
Jesse
March 31, 2016
Here is a real solution just program the buttons to work properly.
https://forums.logitech.com/t5/Design-Controllers-and/R400-or-R800-with-Mac-OS-10-5-amp-10-6/td-p/601092/page/3
it took a bit of finagling but my controller works perfect.
i used the karbiner app to get the screen to “blank”, and the system preferences to change key board shortcuts, to make the play button work.
I had to remove the line of code from the private .xml that controlled the play button.
”
–KeyToKey– KeyCode::F5, KeyCode::P, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L
“
Reply
1. Wayne
  April 1, 2016
  nice tip – thanks.
  Reply
Vance
July 5, 2019
This is such a disadvantage from R400 which I found very affordable & useful. I just try R500 & love the way it’s working nicely with my MacBook!
Reply