LibreOffice 26.8 deliberately avoids generative AI
While Microsoft and Google are increasingly integrating generative AI into their office applications, the Document Foundation is sticking to local processing. LibreOffice 26.8 continues this course while simultaneously expanding numerous classic features.
LibreOffice 26.8, the next major version of the free office suite, has been released. The developers have improved Writer, Calc, and Impress, among other things, as well as the exchange of Microsoft Office files. What is particularly striking is what is missing: generative AI.
The Document Foundation, which is behind the office suite, describes this as a conscious decision. The software processes documents locally and does not require a network connection to operate. This is intended to allow users and organizations to keep track of where their confidential or personal data is going.
In doing so, LibreOffice is taking a different path than Microsoft and Google. Both companies are increasingly integrating generative AI directly into their office applications. Apart from this fundamental decision, LibreOffice 26.8 brings numerous innovations to the individual programs.
Writer gets new justification
Writer receives a new algorithm for justification with the «Paragraph Composer». It considers several lines together and distributes the word spacing across the entire paragraph. This is intended to make uneven spacing occur less frequently.
Source: Document Foundation
LibreOffice now natively supports variable OpenType fonts. Properties such as stroke weight or character width can be changed continuously, provided the respective font allows it. Writer also automatically detects the writing direction of paragraphs and improves the display of right-to-left and vertically written text.
Also new is a draft view. It hides headers, footers, and page margins. The quick search now also includes comments. Large documents with images should also open faster.
Improvements for Calc, Impress, and Office files
Calc receives calculated fields for pivot tables. This allows you to generate additional values from existing data using formulas. A new command randomly shuffles selected cells.
In Impress, slides can be grouped into named sections. Custom slide names appear next to the number. Impress and Draw support different page sizes within a single file.
When exchanging files with Microsoft Office, LibreOffice also attempts to pass through unsupported charts as intact as possible. For example, if you open and save files with waterfall, funnel, sunburst, or treemap charts, the underlying information remains largely preserved. LibreOffice itself still cannot edit or display these charts.
For the first time, LibreOffice occasionally displays a donation banner in the start center. It leads to the Document Foundation's donation page. Advertising, telemetry, user accounts, or subscriptions are still not part of the software.
LibreOffice 26.8 has been available for Windows, macOS, and Linux since August 26. Those who prefer as few changes as possible can stick with the more stable 26.2.5 maintenance branch for the time being.
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