this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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The Document Foundation is proud to release LibreOffice 25.8.

LibreOffice is a powerful, free and open source office suite for Linux, MacOS and Microsoft Windows.

No advertising. No data tracking. No subscriptions.

LibreOffice is used by individuals, businesses, schools, hospitals and cities around the world.

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/08/20/libreoffice-25-8/

New improvements

Highlights of LibreOffice 25.8 include:

  • Up to 30% faster opening of files in Writer and Calc
  • Support for exporting PDF 2.0
  • Improved user interface: the Welcome/What’s New dialog now offers access to the user interface picker and appearance options
  • Optimized memory management for smoother operation on virtual desktops
  • Improved scrolling through large documents
  • New viewer mode to open all files in read-only mode.
  • Overhauled word hyphenation and spacing
  • New financial functions in Calc
  • Significantly better display of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean DOC/DOCX documents
  • Spell check dictionaries updates for Danish, English, Hindi, Mongolian, Spanish, Thai, and Ukrainian.

The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is a German non-profit organization.

We believe that Free Software can provide better privacy, quality, reliability, and greater flexibility than corporate alternatives.

Helping

LibreOffice is developed by hundreds of volunteers around the world.

Join us today and help us to make it even better ❤️

👉 https://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/

Thank you to the developers, designers, translators, donors and supporters 🙏 🙏🙏.

all 36 comments
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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 41 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Is dark mode no longer busted?

I guess I'll find out.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do you mean this issue?

I had this for a while and took a bit of searching to find this simple fix

https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/issues-with-libreoffice-icons-on-dark-mode-in-linux-mint-22-cinnamon/111034

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 6 points 1 month ago

No, not that one. But I guess there are multiple angles, dark mode overall has been pretty rough.

The one that gets in my way the most is their already spotty xlsx conversion seems to parse Office's default font color as black instead of automatic, which means when you open Excel docs on LibreOffice you get black text on black background by default.

You can just select all and manually change the text color, but it's a pain, and on spreadsheets you have to do it on each spreadsheet page. From what I've seen there have been bugs opened and reclosed with "you should set the text to automatic", which is engineer excuses for what is obviously a genuine issue with the defaults of document conversion, as far as I can tell.

[–] tu11ebukk@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

On Debian you can fix this by installing libreoffice-gtk3

[–] stinerman@midwest.social 3 points 1 month ago

Those of us on Debian (stable) won't see this update for 2 years. Haha.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Does it still look like it's from 1998?

It works very well for my light personal needs, but I find the UI to be an eyesore...

[–] iawia@feddit.nl 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

To be fair, they've had the option to switch to that unusable ribbon thing Microsoft switched to for a while now.

Thankfully, it's not the default.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago

The ribbon UI sure is shit.

LO has a command palette which is handy when looking for obscure functions. Shift esc.

[–] egrets@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

There's an optional "tabbed interface" in View > User Interface that's a lot like the Office ribbon. Like the Office ribbon, it has context-sensitive additional tabs, and you can enable a compact version that shows less but takes up less vertical space.

I've not had a need for LibreOffice for a while, but it certainly looks a lot less cluttered than the default old-school toolbars.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 month ago

That looks great

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 month ago

The notes include "improved user interface", so I'm sure whatever issues you have had for years are fixed by that 😅

[–] barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

I like the 1998 version.

[–] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

It has a proper dark mode now. Also there's different icon themes, I like the Breezy theme. Makes it look early 2010s

[–] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

Looks like 98 SE now!

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Would you prefer something Microsoft has cooked up recently?

[–] null@lemmy.nullspace.lol 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah yes, the only 2 design options. 1998 or Microsoft.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean… Corel still looks the same too…

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Office apps looked like that in 1998 because it was an interface that worked. It never should have changed.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 month ago

Lots of love for LibreOffice.

Its a great opensource project that just keeps chugging along being great.

My team and I use it exclusively in our consultancy. Complex documents and spreadsheets all day long. LO never gets tired.

Without LO id be beholden to Microsoft.

Apache should really release the rights to the name OpenOffice and let LO have it.

[–] pipes@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I find the title kinda funny; it's August 2025 and we're proud of it 😎

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

honestly kinda disappointed they switched to calendar versioning, it makes identifying big releases much harder

GNU IMP (i refuse to say the short name) 3.0.0 was such an event, it’s sad knowing libreoffice can’t really have that

[–] lemmyknow@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wait, is the G in GNU pronounced like the G in GIMP?!?!?

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

idk, but the G in GIMP (ugh) does stand for GNU

i wonder if it’s also the official reason that it’s (typically) pronounced in GNOME?

[–] lemmyknow@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I know. I just didn't know GNU was pronounced Gee-Noo, like in GIMP

Isn't GNOME also a GNU thing? GNU Image Manipulation Program Network O… Object… Model… uhh… Environment? Also, this means GNOME is pronounced like Genome, as in, like, Jeans and stuff, innit?

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

…do you pronounce GIMP with a soft G?

for all 3 of these projects the main way ive heard them said is with a hard G, i know there is a debate with GNOME as to pronounce the G or not (as in the word "gnome"), idk if a similar debate exists with GNU

imo, there’s no wrong way to pronounce a word, as long as people know what you’re talking about, it’s fine

[–] lemmyknow@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago

Dammit. I want arguments. Chaos. But yes, I do soft G GIMP. Not GNU or GNOME. I do say GNOME with a G, though. I mean, I don't talk about these things IRL. These words don't show up in my convos. Actually, it might be without a G. I guess I could start soft G'ing GNU and GNOME, just because. It's how I got to soft G GIF, by going the opposite way I was doing. And now it just be like that, and hard G GIF feels kinda weird.

[–] ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Do they have a PDF editor solution?

[–] MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

LibreOffice Draw can actually edit PDFs - it's not perfect for complex layouts but works great for basic editing, adding text, and modifing simple elements (tho sometimes formatting gets a bit wonky).

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Maybe i got lucky, but i always had good experiences with the pdfs i had to tweak in draw

But most of my modofications are kind of form-filling, alignment font and format was never a reequirement

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

Firefox lets you open and edit pdfs