LibreOffice 7.5 Unveiled: New Icons & Enhanced Productivity!

With every update, LibreOffice becomes the best alternative to Microsoft Office and the first choice for Linux users. After six months of continuous development and efforts of 144 contributors (Thank you!), the Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 7.5, which brought many notable improvements.

Why LibreOffice?

LibreOffice is a free, open-source, cross-platform office suite. It uses the OpenDocument Format by default though it offers high compatibility with the Microsoft Office file formats.

In addition to the word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), and presentation (Impress) programs, LibreOffice also includes a graphics editor (Draw), a mathematical formulae editor (Maths), and a database management program (Base), making it one of the few complete office suites.

It is worth noting that LibreOffice is one of the most actively developed open-source software.

What Is New in LibreOffice 7.5?

Finally, after years, with the 7.5 update, LibreOffice got new application icons that look modern and fresher, give a better first impression, and even psychologically make LibreOffice look more professional. In the bargain, this update comes with several improvements and features:

• Improved dark-mode support;
• New recent documents filter option by type on the  start center;

• Smooth scrolling support: finally, we get “more precise” scrolling by long-press on a scrollbar or using Shift + Click;
• Touchpad “rotate and zoom” gestures support;
• Better accessibility: The Writer app has better bookmarks visibility and accessibility, supports custom color in bookmark metadata, and gained decorative mark objects.

• Polished spell checker;
• Improved PDF functionalities: PDF export now supports embedding color emojis and variable fonts and has export comments in the page margin option.

• New “Show data tables” in charts option: finally, we can insert data tables in charts (Double click on chart->Insert -> Data Table…);

• Improved function search: Now, in the Function Wizard, Calc can search for a term in the function descriptions too;
• New “Spell out” (NatNum12) number and currency formats (Writer & Calc);
• New table styles for Draw & Impress (create a custom style option is available too);
• Normal window support for the presenter console.

How to Get LibreOffice 7.5?

LibreOffice 7.5 is available to download for Linux, macOS, and Windows on the official LibreOffice website.

LibreOffice is available almost on every Linux distros repository. Rolling distros (such as Arch) users have already received the update, while users of other distros have to either wait or use the Flatpak version from Flathub.

Ubuntu users can also use the LibreOffice PPA to get the update without waiting for the next Ubuntu release.

💬 Which feature of LibreOffice 7.5 are you most eager to utilize, and how do you envision it improving your productivity?