I will go over some practical steps that you can take to improve the load time and responsiveness of LibreOffice in the paragraphs below.

1. Increase Memory Per Object and Image Cache

This will help the program load faster by allocating more memory resources to the image cache and objects.

  1. Launch LibreOffice Writer (or Calc)
  2. Navigate to “Tools -> Options” in the menubar or use the keyboard shortcut “Alt + F12.”
  3. Click “Memory” under LibreOffice and increase “Use for LibreOffice” to 128MB.
  4. Also increase “Memory per object” to 20Mb.
  5. Click “Ok” to save your changes.

Note: You can set the numbers higher or lower than the suggested values depending on how powerful your machine is. It is best to experiment and see which value gives you the optimum performance.

2. Enable LibreOffice QuickStarter

If you have a generous amount of RAM on your machine, say 4GB and above, you can enable the “Systray Quickstarter” option to keep part of LibreOffice in memory for quicker response with opening new documents. You will definitely see improved performance in opening new documents after enabling this option.

  1. Open the options dialog by navigating to “Tools -> Options.”
  2. In the sidebar under “LibreOffice”, select “Memory.”
  3. Tick the “Enable Systray Quickstarter” checkbox.
  4. Click “OK” to save the changes.

Once this option is enabled, you will see the LibreOffice icon in your system tray with options to open any type of document.

3. Disable Java Runtime

Another easy way to speed up the launch time and responsiveness of LibreOffice is to disable Java.

  1. Open the Options dialog using “Alt + F12.”
  2. In the sidebar, select “LibreOffice,” then “Advanced.”
  3. Uncheck the “Use Java runtime environment” option.
  4. Click “OK” to close the dialog.

If all you use is Writer and Calc, disabling Java will not stop you from working with your files as normal. But to use LibreOffice Base and some other special features, you may need to re-enable it again. In that case, you will get a popup asking if you wish to turn it back on.

4. Reduce Number of Undo Steps

By default, LibreOffice allows you to undo up to 100 changes to a document. Most users do not need anywhere near that, so holding that many steps in memory is largely a waste of resources. I recommend that you reduce this number to 20 to free up memory for other things, but feel free to customise this part to suit your needs.

  1. Open the options dialog by navigating to “Tools -> Options.”
  2. In the sidebar under “LibreOffice,” select “Memory.”
  3. Under “Undo” and change the number of steps to your preferred value.
  4. Click “OK” to save the changes.

If the tips provided helped you speed up the launch time of your LibreOffice Suite, let us know in the comments. Also, please share any other tips you may know for others to benefit as well.