Since I am no longer a staff member at the university, I lost my MS Office access, and so I looked for a free alternative. It took a lot of convincing myself that a free and open-source alternative to MS Office is okay because, from experience on using open-source freeware, I enjoyed using QGIS (open-source) even before I had access to ArcGIS (proprietary). And deciding to use LibreOffice, a free and open-source alternative to MS Office, feels like a parallel I should be okay with.
So why am I having a tantrum? Why is my inner self screaming and pulling my skin off from the inside? Because my mind doesn’t want to learn a new tool and give up the familiarity with MS Office I have had since high school. I feared the change, and surprisingly, it felt physically painful just thinking about shifting from MS Office to LibreOffice.
My internal resistance must stem from the idea that “freeware means unpolished/dated UI,” based on my experience with QGIS vs. ArcGIS.
While using QGIS for the first time in 2021, I never really had any problems with this freeware geographic information system (GIS) because I later realized I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Creating my maps and doing some analysis felt amazing in QGIS until I had a different and much more intuitive experience in ArcGIS in 2024. ArcGIS actually raised the bar and gave me the “I’m not going back” feeling.
And since I have used MS Office for 15 years now, I also hear the same song of “I’m not going backward.” But is using LibreOffice really a downgrade that is why I’m hesitating to switch? Or was it just pure ignorance about the fact that LibreOffice is a perfectly capable tool?
After exploring LibreOffice, I thought, ‘How come I’ve only made the switch now?’ How come nobody told me it’s a powerhouse tool? At a fraction of disk footprint—around 1GB—LibreOffice bundles a full suite of applications for handling documents (Writer), spreadsheets (Calc), presentations (Impress), drawings (Draw), formulas (Math), and databases (Base). Meanwhile, one MS Office tool, take MS Word for example, is already around 2GB.
I’m almost convinced to switch, but first I have to verify whether Writer can add Zotero—a reference management tool I use for my research—as a plug-in. Once I verified that Zotero can be added as an extension, I became a convert.
And since I am now a believer, I am convinced that others—including you, if you haven’t heard of or used LibreOffice yet—should know more about how capable a tool it is!
Here’s what you can find in this post:
Installing LibreOffice on macOS
It was probably too late at night, and decisions about purchases became impulsive. Just PHP599, right? Wrong. IT SHOULD BE FREE. And why did I look for LibreOffice on the App Store instead of going to libreoffice.org? I was duped. And the only reason I learned about my mistake of purchasing it over the App Store, and instead of downloading it for FREE through the website, was when it failed to install the Zotero plug-in.
It was actually Claude who helped me realize my error. More of this in the next section.
The correct way to install LibreOffice is simple:
- Go to libreoffice.org
- Click Download and select the macOS (Apple Silicon) version if you have an M1/M2/M3/M4 Mac, or macOS (Intel) for Intel Macs
- Open the downloaded
.dmgfile - Drag LibreOffice into your Applications folder
- Open it then you’re done
No account needed. No payment. No subscription. Just a full office suite for free.
Installing the Zotero extension
This is where things got interesting for me, and a little painful. Because when I tried to install the Zotero add-in from Zotero → Settings → Cite → Word Processors → Install LibreOffice Add-in, it failed immediately. It needed Java, and I didn’t have it. That’s when I ran to Claude for help.
Here’s a dramatized version of our conversation which I asked Claude to summarize (because our back-and-forth was sure longer than this):
Me: The Zotero plugin installation failed. It says it needs Java.
Claude: You’ll need to install Java first. Since you’re on an M2 Mac, make sure to get the ARM version — Oracle Java 8 from java.com is x86-only and won’t work. Download Adoptium Temurin from adoptium.net, choose macOS and aarch64 architecture.
Me: I already have the aarch64 JRE downloaded — jre-8u491-macosx-aarch64.dmg.
Claude: That’s the right one! Install it, restart LibreOffice, then go to Tools → Options → LibreOffice → Advanced. Java should appear in the list.
(After restarting — the Add button was still grayed out and the JRE list was still empty.)
Me: Still the same problem.
Claude: Let’s confirm Java actually installed. Open Terminal and run: java -version
Me: openjdk version "25.0.3" 2026-04-21 LTS — OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-25.0.3+9
Claude: Java is installed. Now let’s find the exact folder path: ls /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/
Me: temurin-25.jdk
Claude: Good. Click Add… in LibreOffice, press Cmd+Shift+G, and paste: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/temurin-25.jdk/Contents/Home
Me: The Add button is grayed out. Not clickable.
Claude: That’s a known LibreOffice Mac bug when no JRE is detected. Let’s set the Java path directly in LibreOffice’s config file. Run this in Terminal:
mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/4/user/configcat > ~/Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/4/user/config/javasettings_MacOSX_X86_64.xml << 'EOF'<java> <enabled>true</enabled> <userClassPath/> <vmParameters/> <jreLocations> <location>/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/temurin-25.jdk/Contents/Home</location> </jreLocations></java>EOF
(Restart LibreOffice — still the same.)
Claude: LibreOffice on Apple Silicon might be looking for a different filename. Let’s create a copy:
cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/4/user/config/javasettings_MacOSX_X86_64.xml \ ~/Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/4/user/config/javasettings_MacOSX_ARM64.xml
(Still the same. At this point we checked how LibreOffice was running.)
Claude: Open Activity Monitor and find LibreOffice. What does the Kind column say?
Me: Apple.
Claude: So it’s running in native ARM mode — Java should be compatible. Where did you download LibreOffice from?
Me: From the App Store. I paid 599 PHP for it.
Claude: That’s the problem. The App Store version is sandboxed — it’s physically blocked from accessing Java on your system. No config file can fix this. Also — LibreOffice is actually free software. That App Store listing charges for something you can download for free at libreoffice.org.
Me: I was duped?
Claude: Unfortunately, yes. It’s a common App Store scam — someone repackages free open-source software and sells it. You can request a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com.
So, after our conversation, the first thing I did was to request for refund. And yes, I got my refund after 2 days, yay!
Then, I downloaded the real LibreOffice from libreoffice.org, opened it, and immediately, the Add button was clickable. When I went to Tools → Options → LibreOffice → Advanced, Java was already there in the list, automatically detected. I checked “Use a Java runtime environment”, restarted, and ran the Zotero add-in installer. It worked on the first try.
All that troubleshooting, and the fix was simply: use the actual free version.
Why the switch makes sense now
With my non-negotiable (Zotero) satisfied, I could say that I finally crossed over the chasm that felt so wide before I made the switch. What first felt like disdain at the newness of the user interface, I eventually came to like the experience of getting to know another tool. I wish I had done the switch sooner, or that somebody had told me sooner. I’m just glad I finally gave LibreOffice a chance.
Lessons learned
- Don’t buy LibreOffice from the App Store — it’s always free at libreoffice.org. The App Store listing is a paid wrapper around free software.
- The App Store sandbox blocks Java — no amount of config tweaking will fix it.
- M2 Mac needs ARM-native Java — Adoptium Temurin from adoptium.net is the right choice.
- You can request a refund from Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com if you were misled into buying it.
This isn’t my first switch
If you’ve been reading my blog, you might notice a pattern. I’ve done this before:
- I switched browsers (from Chrome to SigmaOS) — Rediscovering a new browser experience with SigmaOS
- I switched from Google Suite to Proton when Gmail ads became too uncomfortable to ignore — The day I decided to deGoogle my life
And now, MS Office to LibreOffice.
None of these switches was easy at first. But looking back, I don’t regret any of them. There will always be a version of me that resists every change, pulls her skin off from the inside, and then a version that comes out the other side wondering why she waited so long.
Maybe that’s just what switching almost always feels like.
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