Bug 113601 - Starting soffice --invisible is not entirely invisible on macOS
Summary: Starting soffice --invisible is not entirely invisible on macOS
Status: ASSIGNED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.4.2.2 release
Hardware: All macOS (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: dcbw@libreoffice.org
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: macOS-UI-polish Dev-related Headless
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Reported: 2017-11-02 14:39 UTC by Loic Nageleisen
Modified: 2026-04-04 22:50 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Description Loic Nageleisen 2017-11-02 14:39:32 UTC 
Description:
soffice --help says that LibreOffice should only be interacted with and managed via API and OS-level signal process management:

   --invisible         Starts in invisible mode. Neither the start-up logo nor
                       the initial program window will be visible. Application
                       can be controlled, and documents and dialogs can be
                       controlled and opened via the API. Using the parameter,
                       the process can only be ended using the taskmanager
                       (Windows) or the kill command (UNIX-like systems). It
                       cannot be used in conjunction with --quickstart.

However on macOS running such an instance has the dock icon showing up.

When running a LO instance dedicated to API processing, isolated through --env:UserInstallation, there is thus a second icon showing up alongside a possibly already running interactive instance, confusing users as to which one is the interactive one, or if there is none, why it is not behaving as expected.

When running multiple LO instances (each one with its own UserInstallation) dedicated to parallel API processing, there is an icon for each separate instance, which, although correct WRT UserInstallation, is quite invasive.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. open a terminal
2. run /Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice --invisible --env:UserInstallation=file:///tmp/test


Actual Results:  
LibreOffice starts but an icon is shown in the dock.

Expected Results:
LibreOffice should be entirely invisible, including its dock icon.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes


OpenGL enabled: Yes

Additional Info:
Version: 5.4.2.2
Build ID: 22b09f6418e8c2d508a9eaf86b2399209b0990f4
CPU threads: 4; OS: Mac OS X 10.13.1; UI render: default; 
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); Calc: group


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_1) AppleWebKit/604.3.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.0.1 Safari/604.3.5
Comment 1 Alex Thurgood 2017-11-06 13:44:02 UTC 
Confirming with 

Version: 5.4.2.2
Build ID: 22b09f6418e8c2d508a9eaf86b2399209b0990f4
Threads CPU : 4; OS : Mac OS X 10.13; UI Render : par défaut; 
Locale : fr-FR (fr_FR.UTF-8); Calc: group
Comment 2 QA Administrators 2018-11-07 04:02:14 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 3 Loic Nageleisen 2018-11-07 15:32:15 UTC 
Confirmed as still present on LibreOffice 6.1.3.2 86daf60bf00efa86ad547e59e09d6bb77c699acb
Comment 4 QA Administrators 2019-11-08 03:37:14 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 5 QA Administrators 2021-11-08 04:07:44 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 6 QA Administrators 2025-10-04 03:12:22 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 7 Hossein 2026-02-25 11:24:42 UTC 
I think the only way to achieve this is to also use headless mode. There was even an attempt to merge invisible and headless mode in the past, 4fe56f3b9af814430a28a1880799f450fb8146b9, which was eventually reverted in 9efd80ac32a80656ed6482df69615227d12bc6d9 as there were some use cases.
Comment 8 Hossein 2026-02-25 11:28:59 UTC 
To clarify, --headless was not working correctly on macOS before January 2026. Now that it is available in the latest LO 26.2, it should be possible to use it alongside --invisible.

@loic: Could you please try --headless mode alongside --invisible, and see if it works as expected?
Comment 9 dcbw@libreoffice.org 2026-02-25 15:35:23 UTC 
Agreed; on macOS you'll need --headless and --invisible to not show any UI. Currently LO will show the dock icon because it's still using NSApplication for everything underneath.

In any case I think I have a solution to hide the dock icon with --headless.
Comment 10 dcbw@libreoffice.org 2026-02-25 15:36:09 UTC 
https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/200344