"Would You Like a Live Preview Feature in LibreOffice?"

[AAA]

Hey LibreOffice community!

I’ve been using LibreOffice for years (shoutout to the amazing team behind it!), and there’s one little thing that could make it even more awesome: an optional “Live Preview” feature.

Imagine this:

• You’re trying out a new font in Writer, and instead of guessing how it’ll look, you get a real-time preview as you hover over the font name.
• Or you’re tweaking a Pivot Table in Calc, and adjustments instantly show up before you click “OK.”

Sounds handy, right? But here’s the catch: it should be optional. Some users (especially those with older hardware) might prefer to keep things lightweight, and that’s totally fine! A toggle in the settings could let everyone choose what works best for them.

Other office suites have this, but LibreOffice’s flexibility and open-source spirit make it the perfect place to implement it the right way—user-controlled and performance-friendly.

What do you think? Would you use a “Live Preview” feature? Any devs out there willing to take this on? Let’s discuss!

P.S. Huge thanks to the LibreOffice team—y’all rock!

[robleyd]

Seems you are asking for a new feature; this is not the appropriate place for bug reports/feature requests.

This is the guide - How to use the Ask site?

Ask a question To do this, click on “+ New topic” in the top bar. [EN Button New Topic] The “Create a new topic” dialog appears. [EN Dialog Create a new Topic] In the “Type title, or paste a link here” line, enter as short a title as possible for the question. In any case, avoid entering the entire content of your question in the “Title” line. If you create your question in the “English” category, “English” will appear automatically. To the right of “Select at least 1 item”, you can sel…

[ajlittoz]

I don’t get how it will work. When you hover over the font name, what is changed? What is the target of the preview?

Let me clarify. In a “well-designed” document, your formatting and layout is controlled by styles. Your styles are organised hierarchically in broad categories, such as headings, body text, index, … These “categories” preset font faces to be used in context.

So, would your hovering override everything and completely disturb the intended difference between narrative and headings?

Apart from the very quick experiment, what is the breaking advantage over temporarily modifying some key style configuration? And this modification can be very quickly reverted with Ctl+M.