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LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

718 points by rpgbr 9d ago

1matin 9d ago
Suggested titles (same logic): LibreOffice breaks download records after GPT-6 Astra is available to the public. LibreOffice breaks download records after DaVinci Resolve 21.1 is released.
piker 9d ago
It’s also been baked into Codex. Go figure
- thenewnewguy 9d ago
  It's open source software - it can be baked into pretty much anything given they follow the license terms.
  - user43928 9d ago
    The question is whether the 10 million active users of Codex / ChatGPT Work count towards the download count. That would contradict the cause implied in the title here.
- jkahrs595 9d ago
  Explains the download records as well
  - jdiff 9d ago
    Not really. One entity embedding the software into another will only account for at most a handful of downloads.
    - nicce 9d ago
      Unless Codex is vibe coded and it downloads it directly on every installation…
      - jdiff 9d ago
        Didn't people find it bundled with a bunch of other things in a single runtime? Downloaded as part of a whole runtime would suggest it wasn't downloaded directly from the source.
  - deleted 9d ago
    [deleted]
- empath75 9d ago
  I think it's not baked into codex, but codex has either been instructed to download it when asked to edit word docs/excel spreadsheets, or it picked it up during training.
  - notatoad 8d ago
    from the thread last week, it seems to be installed by default on every mac install, possibly not on windows installs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528079
- notatoad 8d ago
  i think that's a perfectly coherent and reasonable way for both these apps to work. people don't want AI features leaking into their non-ai apps. I'm not an AI hater - I want my AI app to be able to read and write word docs, but when i decide to open up libreoffice i'm doing that because i want to write something myself, not use AI. i don't need my word processor to bundle an inferior version of what the ChatGPT can do for me.
firefax 9d ago
I've been using Libreoffice to store my diary for years -- IIRC they use blowfish on the crypto side of things? I had a weird issue a while back where I'm not sure if I forgot my diary's password, or the file got corrupted. I've had that happen a few times, each with a long space in between I keep things on paper. It's a great project that doesn't get enough love.
- dotancohen 9d ago
  Why Libreoffice? Does your diary contain advanced formatting, tables, images, or other involved content? Or just for the encryption? I ask because I also keep a diary and have refined how I store it and secure it, over 25+ years. Only recently did I find something that I like better than paper.
smokel 9d ago
The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.
- progval 8d ago
  A graph to confirm it: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version
- rf15 9d ago
  Congratulation to your new unix timestamp record! (and yes, you too, nth reader!)
  - worldsavior 9d ago
    First!
  - rgoulter 9d ago
    I can tell you wrote this comment when you were younger.
- podgietaru 9d ago
  What? A Unix timestamp literally cannot ever be lower. Its a completely assinine comparison isn't it? This is comparative.
  - phoghed 9d ago
    False, in January 2038 at least some systems will go back in time
    - bluGill 9d ago
      I'm planning to make a killing when somebody unretires me to fix all the issues.. Or maybe not, I hope my retirement accounts are so large I can laugh at their "piddly $500/hr offer".
tiahura 9d ago
Hopefully LibreOffice is one of the projects that gets free Pro Max accounts from A and O. Corporations have been trying Star/Open/LibreOffice migrations for literally 30 years at this point. And, at the pace it’s been going, it will probably take another 30 for it to reach Word 95 polish.
- stackghost 9d ago
  Tell me you haven't used LibreOffice without telling me you haven't used LibreOffice. It's actually a pretty great software suite.
ChrisArchitect 9d ago
Related: Yes, no (built-in) AI is now a feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553350
- utopiah 9d ago
  So related it's in the blog post.
dotinvictim 9d ago
enough with this anti ai noise resistance is futile it's getting popular due to improved ui
- allears 9d ago
  Nonsense. I can (and do) resist a lot of things. Society in general may well be screwed, but I'll at least hold onto a bit of self-respect.
- rationalist 9d ago
  I'm not anti-AI (I have a ChatGPT subscription), I just don't like bloat and nagging.
- r053bud 9d ago
  You’re wrong. Despite its usefulness in our profession, AI is deeply unpopular with the general public and products that don’t include it are rapidly gaining in popularity. People are tired of AI being shoved down their throats without consent.
  - nomagicbullet 9d ago
    Are you speaking from personal experience or do you have data to back that up? I honestly would love to see some study around this. I haven't done my research but --anecdotally-- everyone around me is ok with it or even enjoying AI to some degree. No strong stances either way tbh.
    - SiempreViernes 9d ago
      Here you go: https://archive.ph/9erfx https://archive.ph/9erfx bask in that 20% support of "more good than bad when it comes to news" and the 70% thinking it's destroying jobs. There's also this, quite related one, showing that the BigAI CEOs are very disliked by below 34's https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/young-people-ai-ceos-executives-poll https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/young-people-ai...
- 9d ago
jgbuddy 9d ago
Could also be due to the fact that every codex install includes a copy of libreoffice
- ngruhn 9d ago
  what? why?
  - reustle 9d ago
    https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ To better parse office file formats
    - dotancohen 9d ago
      They have absolutely zero regard for system resources. I understand why, but such things were once considered unfeasible - and very recently were also considered undesirable. I still use a laptop with a 100 GiB hard drive - only 80 of which are allocated to the /home/ directory. This would cut into the useable space significantly on that machine. How about Chromebooks?
- paxys 9d ago
  Bundling in codex isn’t going to increase the download count on their website. Unless you’re assuming that every codex install downloads a fresh non-cached copy.
  - phoghed 9d ago
    GH copilot installed it for me when trying to read some docs lol
hn_submit 9d ago
Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.
- matthewmc3 9d ago
  Conversely, a no-AI ethos is one that will very likely need to be walked back at some point in the future for tech products. AI isn't going anywhere, so finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy. For now while it's new and scary and there's a lack of regulation and governance and ethical considerations - I can see why an anti-AI stance is popular, but it's not durable long term.
  - globular-toast 8d ago
    Nobody should be "finding ways to use" any technology. We should be solving problems first and foremost.
  - angiolillo 9d ago
    > finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy It's worth pointing out that the original Document Foundation blog post (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/03/yes-no-ai-is-now-a-feature/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/03/yes-no-a...) seems to be doing exactly this: > The criteria we have listed do not amount to a definitive rejection. The AI sector is evolving rapidly; on-premises inference is becoming manageable on standard hardware; and open models are improving much faster than most of us had anticipated. Should an approach emerge that meets all the conditions, we will evaluate it very carefully.
    - wat10000 9d ago
      That list seems pretty easy to meet today. I’m not sure why they’re waiting for an approach to emerge instead of building it now, unless there’s something else they haven’t listed.
thataccount 9d ago
This is the way!
Joel_Mckay 9d ago
Are you sure it wasn't Microsoft doing a rug-pull October 13 on offline Office 2021 pro lifetime license installations for MacOS. A lot of people are not happy about that stunt. =3
- Zigurd 9d ago
  Or people outside the US distrusting US technology? There is a confluence of trends pointing away from US based tech. It will take a crazy amount of work to restore trust.
rietta 9d ago
This is awesome! I have used LibreOffice (and Open Office) extensively for decades now. It is my real office suite I use for real work and real business accounting tasks. Yes, I am very well aware that Calc is different than Excel but it can get nearly all the same tasks done as long as you are not tied deep into a corporate environment passing Excel-specific files around. I have also made great business uses of it in Docker too, generating perfect PDFS from templates, and normalizing document formats for analysis. I donate a modest $19/month personally to the foundation, much rather pay them than Microsoft!
- mmooss 8d ago
  > normalizing document formats for analysis What do you mean here? Normalizing it into ODF format? Does that limit which tools/libraries you can use to analyze it?
  - rietta 8d ago
    Normalize into flat xml that I could then parse in Nokogiri. Edit for clarity: I am a Rubyist at heart so I reach for Ruby for almost all of my automation, ML, and even now AI stuff. Fro a very long time, I have been able to use CLI LibreOffice to do amazing things. It can read everything, even obscure formats by today's standards, going back into the 1990s. And then once in OpenOffice XML you have one target to parse in your scripting language of choice to do document analysis, data loss prevention detection, and more. All with a clean open source license with no server usage restrictions, unlike MS Office.
    - mmooss 8d ago
      Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if that's how Codex uses LibreOffice.
advenn 9d ago
Do nothing and win
jan_m_savage 9d ago
Regardless of the fact that the 'record download' levels is probably due to some other factor, the world is already becoming conscious that the so-called AI is not all it's cracked up to be.
mosselman 9d ago
Why is this website asking me to enable notifications?!?
airstrike 9d ago
Both Codex and Claude (on the web) use LibreOffice to edit docs, so not sure you can really conclude it broke download records because end users didn't want AI in Office and went with LibreOffice instead
mchusma 9d ago
Can you control it agentically? If so it’s has all the ai features I would want. I typically don’t care for built in ai features.
- russfink 9d ago
  This. I don’t want it to have AI features, but often find myself asking some other AI, “how do I change the paper size from A4 to US Letter,” etc.
- deleted 8d ago
  [deleted]
- datakan 8d ago
  Presumably. The headless CLI part of libreoffice is even included in Codex and Claude Code.
esbranson 9d ago
UNO is for programmatic access. StarOffice ftw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Network_Objects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Network_Objects
bonoboTP 9d ago
Very annoying that AI is this new virtue signaling topic. I guess it's a step up from a few years ago when it was about naming branches, but it's annoying. Libreoffice is free software that's the big point of it. You can mod it and stip what's you dislike. I'd be glad if people developed AI integration with it. One could do that with AI itself. I've successfully modded free software with AI in many ways, adding features to Blender, for example. This binary pro of pro and anti AI buzz is just annoying. Privacy is important. But AI is treated by some people as if it was some nuclear waste. In fact it's very similar to the anti nuclear green movement. It's an emotional aesthetic response.
- dghlsakjg 8d ago
  The actual story below the headline is that AI is allowed in LibreOffice via plugins, they just aren't going to do it themselves since it violates some of their principles about privacy and local data storage. They aren't against AI, they just have certain promises made around the product that would be hard not to break if they added first party AI.
alightsoul 9d ago
Another reason why it might be hitting records is many companies getting rid of Microsoft 365 downloads for desktop and only allowing use of the web version. And apparently it's the first thing that comes up when you try to download Microsoft 365? People don't try to pirate it anymore, they just download LibreOffice
parasxos 9d ago
No AI features is the first feature in years that shipped on time and worked on the first try.
Topgamer7 9d ago
Been using libreoffice for years. Here's hoping increased usage will lead to improvements in the "table" functionality. Like when you can define a table, and hit tab at the last column will put you at the next row first column. Missed that from MS office.
Aurornis 9d ago
I found this graph of LibreOffice downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads Switching to the monthly view, the downloads are actually mostly flat going back to 2019 I can believe that the downloads record has been broken in the same way that the stock market hits record highs all the time because the long term trend is upward. I don’t see anything to suggest that LibreOffice is seeing a sudden surge in popularity or that lack of AI features is driving a surge of downloads.
- xnorswap 8d ago
  I wouldn't say that's flat at all, if you switch to the "architecture" graph it gives a clearer picture without the between-version artefacts of dips that don't exist: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#month,arch https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#month,arch What matters more than the peaks are the floors, which are clearly increasing.
- athorax 8d ago
  If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.
  - VCFundedGenYer 8d ago
    Highly doubt this. Do you have a source or numbers on that bold claim?
    - hobofan 8d ago
      https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 (and I can also just add that it's my go-to tool for that exact use-case, and used it in a dozen different client projects)
    - athorax 8d ago
deleted 9d ago
[deleted]
liampulles 9d ago
The only thing I'd need and want from my office suite for AI are for it to stay in sync with a disk file. Then I can do stuff to the XLSX with Claude, and work on the spreadsheet in my spreadsheet editor. What I DONT want is for my office suite to have any limiting AI features built in.
dekhn 9d ago
false claim of causality (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).
x3haloed 9d ago
I came here to say that this is extraordinarily uninteresting. But some useful thought came out of it: all "AI" features are moving into the generalized agent harness anyways, and good software often maintains a focus. Take Windows, for example. It has a rather broad job being an OS, but as a product it's a good example of loosening focus. it's losing consistency in its opinions about where updates should happen, how settings should apply, which menus are in charge, and even what the design philosophy is. And that bleeds out into the user surface too. Windows 11 is a scattered mess that's increasingly just a surface for finding new ways to pull your attention into ads. Maybe software just needs to remain straightforward and focused, and we let the ChatGPT and Claude apps handle the AI part of things.
Beijinger 9d ago
But they support AI features, like LanguageTool. I always bought Softmaker but since they don't offer this feature in their One-time purchase version, I have started using LibreOffice only.
bluejay2387 9d ago
I don't see not having AI as a feature, but I'd prefer for them to take the approach of optional, easy to implement interfaces that increase the ability for the suite to be 'scripted' rather than implement AI directly. My motivation is that the field of AI is moving so fast I think its a better long term plan to make your software something that can be automated with AI than to try to fight the speed of that innovation curve. I get that even that can be difficult because of security concerns, but it seems more straightforward than implementing models directly into your application.
- dghlsakjg 8d ago
  That is, in fact, exactly what they explain as their approach in the article, as well as their reasoning behind it. It isn't that they disallowed AI, its that they just leave it up to plugins and have no native interface since it violates many of their principles around privacy and local data.
- nosioptar 8d ago
  I absolutely see a lack of soulless clankers to be a feature. I completely agree that focusing on "scripting" would be great. Clanker proxies can allow their clanker to use it while grumpy bastards like me can stick to Bash to automate it.
dreamcompiler 8d ago
Offtopic blogging tip: Americans will read dates like "8/9/2026" as "August 9, 2026." I'm pretty sure the author is using the (more sensible) convention of day/month/year but expressing dates as e.g. "08-Sep-2026" removes the ambiguity.
- majorchord 8d ago
  Highly disagree that either is more sensible than the other, especially given how each culture actually uses dates in their speech. Or we could follow Japan and just use ISO 8601 directly and write 2026-08-09. https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/BzKdTMyDkDyU.png https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/BzKdTMyDkDyU.png
  - JohnTHaller 8d ago
    I use this for everything except where I write the month out or use an abbreviation. Much easier.
- nosioptar 8d ago
  The only real sensible date format is yyyy-mm-dd, makes it easy to sort.
  - dreamcompiler 8d ago
    Agreed. You can leave out the hyphens to make sorting even easier with almost no loss of readability.
rotis 8d ago
Maybe it's just a secret cabal of rogue agents downloading LibreOffice for no particualr reason whatsoever? I mean there is a precedent already: those fellas hijacked some poor wiki.
dartharva 8d ago
Strange, when office suites are the one software category most people are anticipating better AI integration for unlike everything else. Nobody wants AI in browsers, but an AI that can make me the Powerpoint I want without me having to drag cumbersome items by hand? Yes please.
amaccuish 8d ago
I do love LibreOffice, but who thought this colouring is a good idea? https://i.imgur.com/cUzW97S.png https://i.imgur.com/cUzW97S.png If anyone else wants to be rid of it (courtesy of astra): Set NotebookbarColorTransparency to 255. This removes the colored tint while keeping the ribbon. Go to Extras → Optionen → LibreOffice → Erweitert → Experteneinstellungen. Search for NotebookbarColorTransparency. Double-click the matching row under org.openoffice.Office.Common → Misc. Change 150 to 255. Confirm with OK, close the settings, and restart LibreOffice.
whh 8d ago
I broke a weight record after decimating a Mars bar. Weight's been about the same for a year.
dwayne_dibley 8d ago
I wonder how much of this is also driven by Microsofts current downward trajectory, I and others have switched to linux this year.
ltbarcly3 8d ago
LibreOffice is downloaded by several LLM harnesses like codex so...
juiceland 8d ago
Isn’t OpenOffice called by llms to do tasks?
ranger_danger 8d ago
The last time I tried to use LibreOffice, I made three hours worth of comments on a Word document. As soon as I saved the document, they all vanished. Then the developers mocked me for complaining. Now I just use real MS Office in a snapshotted virtual machine, because it works every time and loads just as fast.
reilly3000 8d ago
Hate to say it but it is because of AI, not in spite of it. Codex recently started including the entire libreoffice package for MS office compatibility. https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/
library8848 8d ago
It's also used as a headless office document editor by openai models so... does that impact their metrics?
micromacrofoot 8d ago
this is temporary marketing towards a direction that they may change their mind on in the future, which would likely anger people who downloaded it because of this preference not a call I'd make early on, a preference to disable AI features like Firefox added is maybe a more reasonable call all we know today is that AI is being used in annoying ways, this won't be forever
- JohnTHaller 8d ago
  It has no AI built in, which is a feature to a growing set of users. No AI buttons all over the place and sending your personal data off to who knows where. And if you want AI, you can add your choice of AI via plugins if you want AI in your word processor.
  - micromacrofoot 8d ago
    Sure, but local LLMs are getting smaller all the time... so it could in the not so distant future ship with its own locally-hosted LLM embedded (no data leaving your device). I guess it could always be relegated to plugins, but I suspect over the next 5 years the line is going to get a lot blurrier.
khalic 8d ago
Clickbait title…
politician 8d ago
Basic tools don't need AI features, but facilitating AI access from external agents is extremely useful. We used to call these things APIs.
poilcn 8d ago
Not a fan of pushing LLMs into everything, but this is one of those things where it would be great to have a powerful(or specialized) local llm to help you Write a formula, make a macros, filter stuff, formatting. I'd rather not to Google it. Especially considering SEO made it impossible to find information how to do stuff in editor X of version Y, at best you'd get thrown with crap for other version and have to figure out how to adapt it for your version
- jimmaswell 8d ago
  You can still ask a general model to do that and it will probably have a nearly full success rate at this point. Either a good open weights or something like Astra.
  - poilcn 8d ago
    Yeah, but it would in many cases remove you as a meat proxy when your relative or a friend or your boss ask you how to make X when they have a box where they can write to a genie "I want X" and it would put everything in place for them
injidup 8d ago
Let's use AI to test the validity of an AI generated clickbait article. Fable 5.1 was presented with the following prompt to do research. > https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-no-ai/ https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-n... states an interesting causality. Generate an artifact that tests this claim. Is it causal or coincidental. ie if libreoffice downloads have been increasing every release then it's possible to claim any recent feature change is responsible for the download. You need to get access to the download stats and then see what other major features could be responsible https://funny-taffy-f8d6c0.netlify.app/ https://funny-taffy-f8d6c0.netlify.app/ Conclusion is that the claim is speculative. (This post was meat written. The report is AI generated content. )
- 0x70run 8d ago
  [dead]
8by3 8d ago
today I broke my personal age record – it was a tough ride, but with grit and determination, I think maybe, just maybe, I can do it again tomorrow. Oh, and I also have no AI features.
p2detar 8d ago
I don't buy the AI argument. I'd bet on Linux replacing Windows for a good chunk of desktop users. For example, I installed LibreOffice on my parents' PC last month, because I replaced their Windows with Linux Mint.
evolve2k 8d ago
Hand rolled code is worth more.
maxdo 8d ago
What is the role of tools like libreoffice in the age of ai ? Is it only viewer ? I was fighting alignment on the doc created manually, after 3 mins struggle I typed in Gemini tab of Google Docs , and it did everything perfectly. Same with presentations , tools like bento.page generates you perfect html . I really do not want to go and edit things manually anymore
MahiroHirakawa 8d ago
Kind of telling that "We don't have AI" is now a feature. Maybe people just want software that works.
MahiroHirakawa 8d ago
Kind of telling that "We don't have AI" is now a feature. Maybe people just want software that works.
woodgala 8d ago
Awesome. Now can we fix the bugs and make it more usable? I’m longing for a Microsoft/Google alternative but they are all still clunky as hell and lack the integration of Outlook. Im currently using Planner as an excel replacement and it is painful but less painful than LibreOffice.
vayup 8d ago
Nah, it is probably due to AI agents' love for Libre Office. Codex prefers Libre Office for docs. Other agents may do this as well. People who have never known about Libre Office are now downloading and using Libre Office (often without realizing it). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396
panzi 8d ago
The article says LibreOffice is almost 20 years old. Well, before it was LibreOffice it was OpenOffice in 2000 and before it was OpenOffice it was StarOffice and StarWriter originates in 1985. So you could say it (or the Writer component) is 41 years old.
kingkandu 8d ago
I mean not having voice transcription in a document editor is kind of dumb But not having some shitty clippy-like help system is very nice
deleted 8d ago
[deleted]
lightedman 8d ago
If only it were not dog slow in performance metrics. Still not as slow as Open Office but man it's close. And that's on a newer Dell Pro Max with an Ultra 7 processor, 96GB RAM, and dual GPUs (Arc and RTX Blackwell.)
znpy 8d ago
I’m using Pages on my macbook neo and it seems it doesn’t really have ai features, and if it does, they are very well hidden
secretsatan 8d ago
I switched to LibreOffice just recently, but only because i’d been happy with OpenOffice for years and only recently decided to see if there was an update and found out it had been discontinued in 2011. It was still working fine for me tbh, but i thought better to update to something newer.

718 points by rpgbr 9d ago

Suggested titles (same logic): LibreOffice breaks download records after GPT-6 Astra is available to the public. LibreOffice breaks download records after DaVinci Resolve 21.1 is released.

piker 9d ago

It’s also been baked into Codex. Go figure

thenewnewguy 9d ago
It's open source software - it can be baked into pretty much anything given they follow the license terms.
- user43928 9d ago
  The question is whether the 10 million active users of Codex / ChatGPT Work count towards the download count. That would contradict the cause implied in the title here.
jkahrs595 9d ago
Explains the download records as well
- jdiff 9d ago
  Not really. One entity embedding the software into another will only account for at most a handful of downloads.
  - nicce 9d ago
    Unless Codex is vibe coded and it downloads it directly on every installation…
    - jdiff 9d ago
      Didn't people find it bundled with a bunch of other things in a single runtime? Downloaded as part of a whole runtime would suggest it wasn't downloaded directly from the source.
- deleted 9d ago
  [deleted]
empath75 9d ago
I think it's not baked into codex, but codex has either been instructed to download it when asked to edit word docs/excel spreadsheets, or it picked it up during training.
- notatoad 8d ago
  from the thread last week, it seems to be installed by default on every mac install, possibly not on windows installs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528079
notatoad 8d ago
i think that's a perfectly coherent and reasonable way for both these apps to work. people don't want AI features leaking into their non-ai apps. I'm not an AI hater - I want my AI app to be able to read and write word docs, but when i decide to open up libreoffice i'm doing that because i want to write something myself, not use AI. i don't need my word processor to bundle an inferior version of what the ChatGPT can do for me.

firefax 9d ago

I've been using Libreoffice to store my diary for years -- IIRC they use blowfish on the crypto side of things? I had a weird issue a while back where I'm not sure if I forgot my diary's password, or the file got corrupted. I've had that happen a few times, each with a long space in between I keep things on paper. It's a great project that doesn't get enough love.

dotancohen 9d ago
Why Libreoffice? Does your diary contain advanced formatting, tables, images, or other involved content? Or just for the encryption? I ask because I also keep a diary and have refined how I store it and secure it, over 25+ years. Only recently did I find something that I like better than paper.

smokel 9d ago

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

progval 8d ago
A graph to confirm it: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version
rf15 9d ago
Congratulation to your new unix timestamp record! (and yes, you too, nth reader!)
- worldsavior 9d ago
  First!
- rgoulter 9d ago
  I can tell you wrote this comment when you were younger.
podgietaru 9d ago
What? A Unix timestamp literally cannot ever be lower. Its a completely assinine comparison isn't it? This is comparative.
- phoghed 9d ago
  False, in January 2038 at least some systems will go back in time
  - bluGill 9d ago
    I'm planning to make a killing when somebody unretires me to fix all the issues.. Or maybe not, I hope my retirement accounts are so large I can laugh at their "piddly $500/hr offer".

tiahura 9d ago

Hopefully LibreOffice is one of the projects that gets free Pro Max accounts from A and O. Corporations have been trying Star/Open/LibreOffice migrations for literally 30 years at this point. And, at the pace it’s been going, it will probably take another 30 for it to reach Word 95 polish.

stackghost 9d ago
Tell me you haven't used LibreOffice without telling me you haven't used LibreOffice. It's actually a pretty great software suite.

ChrisArchitect 9d ago

Related: Yes, no (built-in) AI is now a feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553350

utopiah 9d ago
So related it's in the blog post.

dotinvictim 9d ago

enough with this anti ai noise resistance is futile it's getting popular due to improved ui

allears 9d ago
Nonsense. I can (and do) resist a lot of things. Society in general may well be screwed, but I'll at least hold onto a bit of self-respect.
rationalist 9d ago
I'm not anti-AI (I have a ChatGPT subscription), I just don't like bloat and nagging.
r053bud 9d ago
You’re wrong. Despite its usefulness in our profession, AI is deeply unpopular with the general public and products that don’t include it are rapidly gaining in popularity. People are tired of AI being shoved down their throats without consent.
- nomagicbullet 9d ago
  Are you speaking from personal experience or do you have data to back that up? I honestly would love to see some study around this. I haven't done my research but --anecdotally-- everyone around me is ok with it or even enjoying AI to some degree. No strong stances either way tbh.
  - SiempreViernes 9d ago
    Here you go: https://archive.ph/9erfx https://archive.ph/9erfx bask in that 20% support of "more good than bad when it comes to news" and the 70% thinking it's destroying jobs. There's also this, quite related one, showing that the BigAI CEOs are very disliked by below 34's https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/young-people-ai-ceos-executives-poll https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/young-people-ai...
9d ago

jgbuddy 9d ago

Could also be due to the fact that every codex install includes a copy of libreoffice

ngruhn 9d ago
what? why?
- reustle 9d ago
  https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ To better parse office file formats
  - dotancohen 9d ago
    They have absolutely zero regard for system resources. I understand why, but such things were once considered unfeasible - and very recently were also considered undesirable. I still use a laptop with a 100 GiB hard drive - only 80 of which are allocated to the /home/ directory. This would cut into the useable space significantly on that machine. How about Chromebooks?
paxys 9d ago
Bundling in codex isn’t going to increase the download count on their website. Unless you’re assuming that every codex install downloads a fresh non-cached copy.
- phoghed 9d ago
  GH copilot installed it for me when trying to read some docs lol

hn_submit 9d ago

Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.

matthewmc3 9d ago
Conversely, a no-AI ethos is one that will very likely need to be walked back at some point in the future for tech products. AI isn't going anywhere, so finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy. For now while it's new and scary and there's a lack of regulation and governance and ethical considerations - I can see why an anti-AI stance is popular, but it's not durable long term.
- globular-toast 8d ago
  Nobody should be "finding ways to use" any technology. We should be solving problems first and foremost.
- angiolillo 9d ago
  > finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy It's worth pointing out that the original Document Foundation blog post (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/03/yes-no-ai-is-now-a-feature/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/03/yes-no-a...) seems to be doing exactly this: > The criteria we have listed do not amount to a definitive rejection. The AI sector is evolving rapidly; on-premises inference is becoming manageable on standard hardware; and open models are improving much faster than most of us had anticipated. Should an approach emerge that meets all the conditions, we will evaluate it very carefully.
  - wat10000 9d ago
    That list seems pretty easy to meet today. I’m not sure why they’re waiting for an approach to emerge instead of building it now, unless there’s something else they haven’t listed.

thataccount 9d ago

This is the way!

Joel_Mckay 9d ago

Are you sure it wasn't Microsoft doing a rug-pull October 13 on offline Office 2021 pro lifetime license installations for MacOS. A lot of people are not happy about that stunt. =3

Zigurd 9d ago
Or people outside the US distrusting US technology? There is a confluence of trends pointing away from US based tech. It will take a crazy amount of work to restore trust.

rietta 9d ago

This is awesome! I have used LibreOffice (and Open Office) extensively for decades now. It is my real office suite I use for real work and real business accounting tasks. Yes, I am very well aware that Calc is different than Excel but it can get nearly all the same tasks done as long as you are not tied deep into a corporate environment passing Excel-specific files around. I have also made great business uses of it in Docker too, generating perfect PDFS from templates, and normalizing document formats for analysis. I donate a modest $19/month personally to the foundation, much rather pay them than Microsoft!

mmooss 8d ago
> normalizing document formats for analysis What do you mean here? Normalizing it into ODF format? Does that limit which tools/libraries you can use to analyze it?
- rietta 8d ago
  Normalize into flat xml that I could then parse in Nokogiri. Edit for clarity: I am a Rubyist at heart so I reach for Ruby for almost all of my automation, ML, and even now AI stuff. Fro a very long time, I have been able to use CLI LibreOffice to do amazing things. It can read everything, even obscure formats by today's standards, going back into the 1990s. And then once in OpenOffice XML you have one target to parse in your scripting language of choice to do document analysis, data loss prevention detection, and more. All with a clean open source license with no server usage restrictions, unlike MS Office.
  - mmooss 8d ago
    Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if that's how Codex uses LibreOffice.

advenn 9d ago

Do nothing and win

jan_m_savage 9d ago

Regardless of the fact that the 'record download' levels is probably due to some other factor, the world is already becoming conscious that the so-called AI is not all it's cracked up to be.

mosselman 9d ago

Why is this website asking me to enable notifications?!?

airstrike 9d ago

Both Codex and Claude (on the web) use LibreOffice to edit docs, so not sure you can really conclude it broke download records because end users didn't want AI in Office and went with LibreOffice instead

mchusma 9d ago

Can you control it agentically? If so it’s has all the ai features I would want. I typically don’t care for built in ai features.

russfink 9d ago
This. I don’t want it to have AI features, but often find myself asking some other AI, “how do I change the paper size from A4 to US Letter,” etc.
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datakan 8d ago
Presumably. The headless CLI part of libreoffice is even included in Codex and Claude Code.

esbranson 9d ago

UNO is for programmatic access. StarOffice ftw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Network_Objects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Network_Objects

bonoboTP 9d ago

Very annoying that AI is this new virtue signaling topic. I guess it's a step up from a few years ago when it was about naming branches, but it's annoying. Libreoffice is free software that's the big point of it. You can mod it and stip what's you dislike. I'd be glad if people developed AI integration with it. One could do that with AI itself. I've successfully modded free software with AI in many ways, adding features to Blender, for example. This binary pro of pro and anti AI buzz is just annoying. Privacy is important. But AI is treated by some people as if it was some nuclear waste. In fact it's very similar to the anti nuclear green movement. It's an emotional aesthetic response.

dghlsakjg 8d ago
The actual story below the headline is that AI is allowed in LibreOffice via plugins, they just aren't going to do it themselves since it violates some of their principles about privacy and local data storage. They aren't against AI, they just have certain promises made around the product that would be hard not to break if they added first party AI.

alightsoul 9d ago

Another reason why it might be hitting records is many companies getting rid of Microsoft 365 downloads for desktop and only allowing use of the web version. And apparently it's the first thing that comes up when you try to download Microsoft 365? People don't try to pirate it anymore, they just download LibreOffice

parasxos 9d ago

No AI features is the first feature in years that shipped on time and worked on the first try.

Topgamer7 9d ago

Been using libreoffice for years. Here's hoping increased usage will lead to improvements in the "table" functionality. Like when you can define a table, and hit tab at the last column will put you at the next row first column. Missed that from MS office.

Aurornis 9d ago

I found this graph of LibreOffice downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads Switching to the monthly view, the downloads are actually mostly flat going back to 2019 I can believe that the downloads record has been broken in the same way that the stock market hits record highs all the time because the long term trend is upward. I don’t see anything to suggest that LibreOffice is seeing a sudden surge in popularity or that lack of AI features is driving a surge of downloads.

xnorswap 8d ago
I wouldn't say that's flat at all, if you switch to the "architecture" graph it gives a clearer picture without the between-version artefacts of dips that don't exist: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#month,arch https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#month,arch What matters more than the peaks are the floors, which are clearly increasing.
athorax 8d ago
If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.
- VCFundedGenYer 8d ago
  Highly doubt this. Do you have a source or numbers on that bold claim?
  - hobofan 8d ago
    https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 (and I can also just add that it's my go-to tool for that exact use-case, and used it in a dozen different client projects)
  - athorax 8d ago

deleted 9d ago

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liampulles 9d ago

The only thing I'd need and want from my office suite for AI are for it to stay in sync with a disk file. Then I can do stuff to the XLSX with Claude, and work on the spreadsheet in my spreadsheet editor. What I DONT want is for my office suite to have any limiting AI features built in.

dekhn 9d ago

false claim of causality (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).

x3haloed 9d ago

I came here to say that this is extraordinarily uninteresting. But some useful thought came out of it: all "AI" features are moving into the generalized agent harness anyways, and good software often maintains a focus. Take Windows, for example. It has a rather broad job being an OS, but as a product it's a good example of loosening focus. it's losing consistency in its opinions about where updates should happen, how settings should apply, which menus are in charge, and even what the design philosophy is. And that bleeds out into the user surface too. Windows 11 is a scattered mess that's increasingly just a surface for finding new ways to pull your attention into ads. Maybe software just needs to remain straightforward and focused, and we let the ChatGPT and Claude apps handle the AI part of things.

Beijinger 9d ago

But they support AI features, like LanguageTool. I always bought Softmaker but since they don't offer this feature in their One-time purchase version, I have started using LibreOffice only.

bluejay2387 9d ago

I don't see not having AI as a feature, but I'd prefer for them to take the approach of optional, easy to implement interfaces that increase the ability for the suite to be 'scripted' rather than implement AI directly. My motivation is that the field of AI is moving so fast I think its a better long term plan to make your software something that can be automated with AI than to try to fight the speed of that innovation curve. I get that even that can be difficult because of security concerns, but it seems more straightforward than implementing models directly into your application.

dghlsakjg 8d ago
That is, in fact, exactly what they explain as their approach in the article, as well as their reasoning behind it. It isn't that they disallowed AI, its that they just leave it up to plugins and have no native interface since it violates many of their principles around privacy and local data.
nosioptar 8d ago
I absolutely see a lack of soulless clankers to be a feature. I completely agree that focusing on "scripting" would be great. Clanker proxies can allow their clanker to use it while grumpy bastards like me can stick to Bash to automate it.

dreamcompiler 8d ago

Offtopic blogging tip: Americans will read dates like "8/9/2026" as "August 9, 2026." I'm pretty sure the author is using the (more sensible) convention of day/month/year but expressing dates as e.g. "08-Sep-2026" removes the ambiguity.

majorchord 8d ago
Highly disagree that either is more sensible than the other, especially given how each culture actually uses dates in their speech. Or we could follow Japan and just use ISO 8601 directly and write 2026-08-09. https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/BzKdTMyDkDyU.png https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/BzKdTMyDkDyU.png
- JohnTHaller 8d ago
  I use this for everything except where I write the month out or use an abbreviation. Much easier.
nosioptar 8d ago
The only real sensible date format is yyyy-mm-dd, makes it easy to sort.
- dreamcompiler 8d ago
  Agreed. You can leave out the hyphens to make sorting even easier with almost no loss of readability.

rotis 8d ago

Maybe it's just a secret cabal of rogue agents downloading LibreOffice for no particualr reason whatsoever? I mean there is a precedent already: those fellas hijacked some poor wiki.

dartharva 8d ago

Strange, when office suites are the one software category most people are anticipating better AI integration for unlike everything else. Nobody wants AI in browsers, but an AI that can make me the Powerpoint I want without me having to drag cumbersome items by hand? Yes please.

amaccuish 8d ago

I do love LibreOffice, but who thought this colouring is a good idea? https://i.imgur.com/cUzW97S.png https://i.imgur.com/cUzW97S.png If anyone else wants to be rid of it (courtesy of astra): Set NotebookbarColorTransparency to 255. This removes the colored tint while keeping the ribbon. Go to Extras → Optionen → LibreOffice → Erweitert → Experteneinstellungen. Search for NotebookbarColorTransparency. Double-click the matching row under org.openoffice.Office.Common → Misc. Change 150 to 255. Confirm with OK, close the settings, and restart LibreOffice.

whh 8d ago

I broke a weight record after decimating a Mars bar. Weight's been about the same for a year.

dwayne_dibley 8d ago

I wonder how much of this is also driven by Microsofts current downward trajectory, I and others have switched to linux this year.

ltbarcly3 8d ago

LibreOffice is downloaded by several LLM harnesses like codex so...

juiceland 8d ago

Isn’t OpenOffice called by llms to do tasks?

ranger_danger 8d ago

The last time I tried to use LibreOffice, I made three hours worth of comments on a Word document. As soon as I saved the document, they all vanished. Then the developers mocked me for complaining. Now I just use real MS Office in a snapshotted virtual machine, because it works every time and loads just as fast.

reilly3000 8d ago

Hate to say it but it is because of AI, not in spite of it. Codex recently started including the entire libreoffice package for MS office compatibility. https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/

library8848 8d ago

It's also used as a headless office document editor by openai models so... does that impact their metrics?

micromacrofoot 8d ago

this is temporary marketing towards a direction that they may change their mind on in the future, which would likely anger people who downloaded it because of this preference not a call I'd make early on, a preference to disable AI features like Firefox added is maybe a more reasonable call all we know today is that AI is being used in annoying ways, this won't be forever

JohnTHaller 8d ago
It has no AI built in, which is a feature to a growing set of users. No AI buttons all over the place and sending your personal data off to who knows where. And if you want AI, you can add your choice of AI via plugins if you want AI in your word processor.
- micromacrofoot 8d ago
  Sure, but local LLMs are getting smaller all the time... so it could in the not so distant future ship with its own locally-hosted LLM embedded (no data leaving your device). I guess it could always be relegated to plugins, but I suspect over the next 5 years the line is going to get a lot blurrier.

khalic 8d ago

Clickbait title…

politician 8d ago

Basic tools don't need AI features, but facilitating AI access from external agents is extremely useful. We used to call these things APIs.

poilcn 8d ago

Not a fan of pushing LLMs into everything, but this is one of those things where it would be great to have a powerful(or specialized) local llm to help you Write a formula, make a macros, filter stuff, formatting. I'd rather not to Google it. Especially considering SEO made it impossible to find information how to do stuff in editor X of version Y, at best you'd get thrown with crap for other version and have to figure out how to adapt it for your version

jimmaswell 8d ago
You can still ask a general model to do that and it will probably have a nearly full success rate at this point. Either a good open weights or something like Astra.
- poilcn 8d ago
  Yeah, but it would in many cases remove you as a meat proxy when your relative or a friend or your boss ask you how to make X when they have a box where they can write to a genie "I want X" and it would put everything in place for them

injidup 8d ago

Let's use AI to test the validity of an AI generated clickbait article. Fable 5.1 was presented with the following prompt to do research. > https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-no-ai/ https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-n... states an interesting causality. Generate an artifact that tests this claim. Is it causal or coincidental. ie if libreoffice downloads have been increasing every release then it's possible to claim any recent feature change is responsible for the download. You need to get access to the download stats and then see what other major features could be responsible https://funny-taffy-f8d6c0.netlify.app/ https://funny-taffy-f8d6c0.netlify.app/ Conclusion is that the claim is speculative. (This post was meat written. The report is AI generated content. )

0x70run 8d ago
[dead]

8by3 8d ago

today I broke my personal age record – it was a tough ride, but with grit and determination, I think maybe, just maybe, I can do it again tomorrow. Oh, and I also have no AI features.

p2detar 8d ago

I don't buy the AI argument. I'd bet on Linux replacing Windows for a good chunk of desktop users. For example, I installed LibreOffice on my parents' PC last month, because I replaced their Windows with Linux Mint.

evolve2k 8d ago

Hand rolled code is worth more.

maxdo 8d ago

What is the role of tools like libreoffice in the age of ai ? Is it only viewer ? I was fighting alignment on the doc created manually, after 3 mins struggle I typed in Gemini tab of Google Docs , and it did everything perfectly. Same with presentations , tools like bento.page generates you perfect html . I really do not want to go and edit things manually anymore

MahiroHirakawa 8d ago

Kind of telling that "We don't have AI" is now a feature. Maybe people just want software that works.

MahiroHirakawa 8d ago

Kind of telling that "We don't have AI" is now a feature. Maybe people just want software that works.

woodgala 8d ago

Awesome. Now can we fix the bugs and make it more usable? I’m longing for a Microsoft/Google alternative but they are all still clunky as hell and lack the integration of Outlook. Im currently using Planner as an excel replacement and it is painful but less painful than LibreOffice.

vayup 8d ago

Nah, it is probably due to AI agents' love for Libre Office. Codex prefers Libre Office for docs. Other agents may do this as well. People who have never known about Libre Office are now downloading and using Libre Office (often without realizing it). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396

panzi 8d ago

The article says LibreOffice is almost 20 years old. Well, before it was LibreOffice it was OpenOffice in 2000 and before it was OpenOffice it was StarOffice and StarWriter originates in 1985. So you could say it (or the Writer component) is 41 years old.

kingkandu 8d ago

I mean not having voice transcription in a document editor is kind of dumb But not having some shitty clippy-like help system is very nice

deleted 8d ago

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lightedman 8d ago

If only it were not dog slow in performance metrics. Still not as slow as Open Office but man it's close. And that's on a newer Dell Pro Max with an Ultra 7 processor, 96GB RAM, and dual GPUs (Arc and RTX Blackwell.)

znpy 8d ago

I’m using Pages on my macbook neo and it seems it doesn’t really have ai features, and if it does, they are very well hidden

secretsatan 8d ago

I switched to LibreOffice just recently, but only because i’d been happy with OpenOffice for years and only recently decided to see if there was an update and found out it had been discontinued in 2011. It was still working fine for me tbh, but i thought better to update to something newer.