Slideshow presentations are all well and good, but sometimes having to return to your laptop or computer to advance the next element of the show doesn’t fit in with your plans. Expensive hardware devices exist for the likes of PowerPoint, but in keeping with its open-source roots, the developers at LibreOffice have come up with a better solution, allowing you to press into service your Android phone or tablet as a remote control for your LibreOffice Impress presentations instead.

The app requires LibreOffice 4.0.1 or later to be running on your Windows, Mac or Linux machine, and rather than rely on a wi-fi or cellular connection, Impress Remote currently only supports Bluetooth as your wireless medium, so you’ll need a computer and mobile with Bluetooth capabilities paired first.

With the hardware talking to each other, you then have to enable the remote control within Impress itself – head over to Tools > Options > LibreOffice Impress > General to do so, then completely close down and restart Impress for the settings to take effect.

Once done, fire up the app on your Android mobile, load the presentation into Impress on your computer and, after a short pause, you should hopefully be able to view and control it from your Android. The interface is slick, responsive and easy to use – you can control the slideshow a number of ways, including via your touch-screen, plus view any attached notes alongside the current slide. It’s a little glitchy this early in its development, but Impress Remote works pretty well.