How to get backgroundtemplate of current slide to show up in Beamer's notes page?

Question

As a way to share a plot or other graphics for a single slide, I use \backgroundtemplate, before \begin{frame}, to specify a full-screen graphic to use as background, with just a title or sometimes a title and normal frame text. When I invoke \secondscreennotestrue I notice that the notes page shows a version of my frame without the background image.

This makes it impossible for me to know what my audience is seeing, without turning around to look at the projection, if it is behind me.

How can I make beamer render the preview/small version of each slide, on the notes page, exactly as it is, i. e. including the background image?

Answer 1

Beamer deliberately renders the slide preview without any frame decorations like head, footline or background.

You can avoid the problem by adding your image e.g. like this:

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage{tikz}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}

\begin{document}
    
{
  \addtobeamertemplate{frametitle}{
    \tikz[remember picture,overlay,inner sep=0pt]{\node at (current page.center) {\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]{example-image-duck}};}
  }{}
  \begin{frame}
    \frametitle{title}
      abc
    \note{note text}
  \end{frame} 
}   

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{title}
    abc
  \note{note text}
\end{frame} 
\end{document}