DeckCraft

DeckCraft is a free, open source presentation app from the ArtCraft team, built to work like Microsoft PowerPoint. You build decks with themes, layouts, shapes, pictures, tables, charts, transitions and animations, then present them full screen. It runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and in a web browser.

What it can do

• Familiar from the first slide. PowerPoint's ribbon, layouts, themes and shortcuts.
• Everything a deck needs. Shapes, pictures, tables, charts, transitions and build-by-paragraph animations.
• Present with confidence. Full-screen slide show, presenter view with notes, a pen for drawing on slides, rehearsed timings and media playback.
• Real PowerPoint files. Open and save .pptx, and export slides, notes pages or handouts as PDF.
• Works with AI assistants. Every button is a command, so the command line and AI assistants can build and edit decks through MCP.

Part of the Crafting Apps

DeckCraft is one of the Crafting Apps, a family of free, open source creative and office apps from ArtCraft, each a clean-room rebuild of a well-known paid app written from scratch in Rust. The best known is PhotoCraft, a Photoshop-style photo editor. They share the same approach: familiar menus and shortcuts, fast native apps on every major system, a version that runs in your browser, and commands an AI assistant can drive.

DeckCraft, LibreOffice Impress, ONLYOFFICE Docs or PowerPoint?

All four make presentations. The difference is how familiar they feel, how mature they are, and what they cost.

DeckCraftThis page

Best forPowerPoint users who want a free, familiar alternative to try

Copies PowerPoint's ribbon and features and opens real .pptx files. Only weeks old.

How mature

Alpha (2026)

Open source

Yes (MIT or Apache 2.0)

Cost

Free

LibreOffice Impress

Best forA free, proven presentation app

Part of LibreOffice. Capable and stable, though .pptx files don't always look identical.

How mature

Very mature

Open source

Yes (MPL 2.0)

Cost

Free

ONLYOFFICE Docs

Best forPowerPoint-like editing in a browser, self-hosted

An office suite with a PowerPoint-style editor and good .pptx compatibility.

How mature

Mature

Open source

Yes (AGPL 3.0)

Cost

Free; paid editions

PowerPoint

Best forPresentations that must look perfect everywhere

The standard, with Designer and Copilot. Closed source and paid through Microsoft 365.

How mature

Industry standard

Open source

No

Cost

Subscription

A quick way to choose: need a dependable free option today? Use LibreOffice Impress. Want to edit in the browser on your own server? Try ONLYOFFICE. Presenting company decks that must match exactly? PowerPoint. Want a fast, free, PowerPoint-like app to try? Try DeckCraft.

How to get it

• Easiest: download it from the DeckCraft page on getartcraft.com, or from the latest release on GitHub.
• Every system: installers for Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows (including ARM), Linux (AppImage, Flatpak, .deb, .rpm) and FreeBSD.
• In a browser: a web version runs the whole app in a modern browser, and you can host it yourself.
• For scripts and AI assistants: the deckcraft-cli tool runs the same commands without opening the app and includes an MCP server.

Good to know

• Alpha. DeckCraft is in alpha. It covers about 79% of PowerPoint's features by breadth, and its team estimates it's about 55% of the way to replacing PowerPoint for real work. These are the team's own estimates; nobody has tested them independently yet.
• Changing very fast. New versions arrive every few days, so expect bugs and update often.
• Built with AI help. The ArtCraft team uses AI coding agents heavily, which is how so much appeared so quickly. Test it on your own files before you rely on it.
• No Microsoft code. It's a clean-room rebuild, written from public file specifications and by observing how PowerPoint behaves, not from Microsoft's code.
• Licence: MIT or Apache 2.0, your choice. Free to use, including at work. The ArtCraft and DeckCraft names and logos have their own, stricter terms.