Beamer: how to make each frame appear in the PDF toc?

Question

I would like to have a beamer presentation in which every frame appears in the PDF table of contents (i.e. has a bookmark). My specific presentation only has sections, so all of the frames can appear as a "subsection" on the PDF. Note that I don't want to make a subsection for each frame.

One way to do that is make up a command that patches frametitle by calling the appropriate bookmark command of hyperref. Is there any better way?

Answer 1

Here is a solution that patches an auxiliary macro in \frametitle, adding code that adds a table-of-contents line as if it were a subsection:

\documentclass{beamer}

\AtBeginSection{\frame{\tableofcontents[currentsection]}}

\usepackage{bookmark}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\apptocmd{\beamer@@frametitle}{
  % keep this line to add the frame title to the TOC at the "subsection level"
  \addtocontents{toc}{\protect\beamer@subsectionintoc{\the\c@section}{0}{#1}{\the\c@page}{\the\c@part}%
        {\the\beamer@tocsectionnumber}}%
  % keep this line to add a bookmark that shows up in the PDF TOC at the subsection level
  \bookmark[page=\the\c@page,level=3]{#1}
  }%
  {\message{** patching of \string\beamer@@frametitle succeeded **}}%
  {\message{** patching of \string\beamer@@frametitle failed **}}%
\makeatother


\begin{document}

\section{First Section}


\begin{frame}{First frame}\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Second frame}\end{frame}

\section{Second Section}


\begin{frame}{Third Frame}\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Fourth frame}\end{frame}


\end{document}

I had to dig around in beamerbasesection.sty to figure that out. But it seems to work.

EDIT. I put in the bookmarking this time. Rather than delete the code which does something you didn't ask for, I left it for you to comment out.