Beamer note page: Reduce left margin

Question

I am using the beamer notes, but to my mind, the left margin is a bit too large since it reduces the usable space significantly. Is it possible to reduce this?

Here is my code:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeamertemplate{note page}[compact]
\setbeameroption{second mode text on second screen=left}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}

\begin{document}

\section{bla}
\begin{frame}{bla}
Some text.
\note[item]{This is a note item}
\note{only text note}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

And here a picture with the margin I mean marked in red

Answer 1

You can use the commands \AtBeginNote and \AtEndNote to modify this behavior.

For normal notes you can add some negative space at the beginning, e.g. \hspace*{-10pt}, while for the others you have to modify itemize-specific lengths. For example you can issue a \addtolength\leftmargini{-10pt} at the beginning and \addtolength\leftmargini{10pt} at the end so to restore the normal behavior.

In other words, you can add the following lines to achieve what you want

\AtBeginNote{\hspace*{-10pt}\addtolength\leftmargini{-10pt}}
\AtEndNote{\addtolength\leftmargini{10pt}}

MWE:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeamertemplate{note page}[compact]
\setbeameroption{second mode text on second screen=left}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}

\begin{document}
\section{bla}
\begin{frame}{bla}
Some text.
\note[item]{This is a note item}
\note{only text note}
\end{frame}

\AtBeginNote{\hspace*{-10pt}\addtolength\leftmargini{-10pt}}
\AtEndNote{\addtolength\leftmargini{10pt}}

\section{bla}
\begin{frame}{bla}
Some text.
\note[item]{This is a note item}
\note{only text note}
\end{frame}
\end{document}  

You can notice the difference in consecutive frames:

Of course, in your document, place those two lines at the beginning.