How to Enable 'Dark Mode' in LibreOffice

If you fancy dark mode and most of your work time are in LibreOffice well, this guide is for you.

LibreOffice the free and open-source office productivity software is used by millions around the world. This cross-platform software runs in Windows, Linux, and other distributions.

Millions of users around the world use LibreOffice. Probably that includes you. And everyone seems to prefer dark mode these days. And there are some advantages as well.

Research suggests that dark mode protects eyes for extended use of mobiles and computers, saves a bit of battery as well especially for AMOLED displays. That’s not all, dark mode makes the texts looks crisps and clear and improves productivity.

Dark mode can be enabled for apps and system-wide as well if your system – Linux or Windows supports it.

LibreOffice doesn’t provide a direct dark mode, per se. But you can tweak some settings with its dark icon themes to make it dark with the help of your OS settings. This is how you can do it. Remember these settings should be applicable for Windows, Linux, macOS as well from LibreOffice perspective.

How to Enable Dark Mode in LibreOffice

We will explain it in two steps – a) Windows and b) Linux. Because for both the OS, LibreOffice look different due to their own dark themes.

Windows

If you are using Windows, the dark mode would look a bit different. Windows 10 doesn’t provide application-specific dark mode at the moment. The Windows 10 dark mode is limited to start menu and certain applications (such as Google Chrome Windows build).

Open LibreOffice. Open any component – Writer, Calc etc.
From menu, click Tools -> Options.
On the Options dialog, on the left side click Personalization.

Select the pre-installed theme – dark.
Go to Application Colors, select document background as Black. You can also choose the Application background as Black.
If you would like to change to a dark theme, change it from View options on the left side.

Once done, press OK.

That’s all. Enjoy your dark or night mode of LibreOffice in Windows.

If everything works well, you would see the Writer, Calc like below.

Ubuntu, Linux

Open LibreOffice. Open any component – Writer, Calc etc.
From menu, click Tools -> Options.
Go to Application Colors, select document background as Black. You can also choose the Application background as Black.
If you would like to change to a dark icon theme, change it from View options on the left side for better visibility of the toolbar icons.
Then, from Settings, select any dark GTK theme (e.g. Adwaita Dark) and apply. LibreOffice is more compatible with the Ubuntu, hence the GTK dark themes are properly applied.

That’s all. Your LibreOffice should look like below.