Hey all,
Unfortunately I've been having some trouble getting libreoffice to work in light mode while having my system theme be dark mode. I figured out that libreoffice seems to take the theme from the "widget theme" in the budgie desktop settings, the dark mode slider has no effect. So I have my widgets set to a Materia light theme to try to get libreoffice working, and it mostly does but the sheet tab selector and the input line remain blacked out with black text so I cannot read them. I tried both the eopkg and the flatpak but ran into the same issues, looking online it seems to be a libreoffice problem.

So is there anything that I can do to make libreoffice usable again? This is especially a problem in Calc. I tried a few combinations of libreoffice and budgie settings but couldn't get the issue to go away. I just want libreoffice to completely ignore my system theme and use the "light" mode.

Here are all my current settings and what the problem looks like visually:


a year later

Hi, I've the same issue, do you solve it? Have you the solution? Tanks !

I went libre office: settings: toggled from dark theme to light theme: hit apply: hit ok. and closed dialogue box.still dark. killed app. relaunched. still dark.

I can confirm the setting is busted in Libre.
Buuuut--"I've been having some trouble getting libreoffice to work in light mode while having my system theme be dark mode"

Isn't that the way it works for every app, every distro? apps mimic system theme? or can app themes be independent of the system theme?
[I have no care of appearing the fool with that question as long as I learn.]

I tried turning gedit into light theme and I succeeded to an extent:

See titlebar still mimics system dark theme.
And then i thought well I had to make an adustments to a "custom theme". Since I use Libre for Writer only, I wonder if deep in its settings are 'custom schemes' or crap the like that will make the light theme stick easier?
In others words instead of toggling into Light theme, maybe make Libre friendly to it first. If that makes sense.

I have Budgie and these settings
Budgie desktop settings: Widget - Dark theme, Enabled - Dark style
LO: Tools - Options:

  • View - Mode: System
  • Application Colors - Automatic: Light

There are User interface elements, if there is something unreadable, e.g. the same background colors and fonts, you can arrange it yourself.

You can try renaming ~/.config/libreoffice to something else or move the directory to another location and run LO.

Open LO libreoffice --calc --safe-mode and see what you would like to apply.

This is a bug in the way Budgie handles application themeing. Look to see if there's an issue filed on their bug tracker and file a new one if necessary. Thanks!