LibreOffice no longer in Apple store ?

[iplaw67]

Hello all,

A general question to the Board : has a decision been taken to remove LibreOffice from the Apple store (whether voluntarily or forced removal by Apple) ?

I ask because whilst searching today (13/01/2023) via the search bar of the store, there is only 1 LibreOffice specific result, and that is LibreOffice Viewer, being sold for 3,49 EUR, and figuring somewhere in the bottom quarter of all the results displayed.

Otherwise, sorting by relevance, the first occurrence of anything derived from OOo technology is NeoOffice (4th place), and Collabora Office (35th place).

The first 3 results, in order, are MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint.

Tried searching also with :

"Libre Office"

"libre office"

"libreoffice"

to no better effect (in fact, even worse, as NeoOffice gets shunted even further down).

Anyone on the board with knowledge of what is going on ?

Alex

[italovignoli]

Hi Alex, some people see LibreOffice in the Apple Store, and some don’t see it (I don’t see it, and I see different things from you). We are investigating with Apple. The new version 7.4.4 was approved, and has been uploaded without issues as the previous one, so the behaviour is indeed strange.

On 1/13/23 09:34, Alexander Thurgood wrote:

Hello all,

A general question to the Board : has a decision been taken to remove LibreOffice from the Apple store (whether voluntarily or forced removal by Apple) ?

I ask because whilst searching today (13/01/2023) via the search bar of the store, there is only 1 LibreOffice specific result, and that is LibreOffice Viewer, being sold for 3,49 EUR, and figuring somewhere in the bottom quarter of all the results displayed.

Otherwise, sorting by relevance, the first occurrence of anything derived from OOo technology is NeoOffice (4th place), and Collabora Office (35th place).

The first 3 results, in order, are MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint.

Tried searching also with :

“Libre Office”

“libre office”

“libreoffice”

to no better effect (in fact, even worse, as NeoOffice gets shunted even further down).

Anyone on the board with knowledge of what is going on ?

Alex

[iplaw67]

Hi Italo,

Le 13/01/2023 à 10:18, Italo Vignoli a écrit :

Hi Alex, some people see LibreOffice in the Apple Store, and some don’t see it (I don’t see it, and I see different things from you). We are investigating with Apple. The new version 7.4.4 was approved, and has been uploaded without issues as the previous one, so the behaviour is indeed strange.

Thanks for responding. It turns out that I got the update to 7.4.4 automatically (as the previous version was already installed), but for the life of me, I can not get it to appear in the search results, hence my question.

Alex

[sophi]

Hi Alex,

Hi Italo,

Hi Alex, some people see LibreOffice in the Apple Store, and some don't see it (I don't see it, and I see different things from you). We are investigating with Apple. The new version 7.4.4 was approved, and has been uploaded without issues as the previous one, so the behaviour is indeed strange.

Thanks for responding. It turns out that I got the update to 7.4.4 automatically (as the previous version was already installed), but for the life of me, I can not get it to appear in the search results, hence my question.

You don't see it currently because their is a special request for France that we have to comply with first (ANSSI certificate). Once this done, you'll be able to see it
Christian provided a direct link, but we don't know if it will work either:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libreoffice/id1630474372
Cheers
Sophie

[iplaw67]

Thanks Sophie !

You don't see it currently because their is a special request for France that we have to comply with first (ANSSI certificate). Once this done, you'll be able to see it
Christian provided a direct link, but we don't know if it will work either:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libreoffice/id1630474372

The link will open in a browser just fine, but if I agree to open the link in the default Apple Store app, it displays an error message

"App indisponible"

"Cette app est actuellement indisponible dans votre pays ou région".

So, currently still not visible/available for French-based Apple store.

Alex

[sophi]

Hi all,

Hi Alex,

Hi Italo,

Hi Alex, some people see LibreOffice in the Apple Store, and some don't see it (I don't see it, and I see different things from you). We are investigating with Apple. The new version 7.4.4 was approved, and has been uploaded without issues as the previous one, so the behaviour is indeed strange.

Thanks for responding. It turns out that I got the update to 7.4.4 automatically (as the previous version was already installed), but for the life of me, I can not get it to appear in the search results, hence my question.

You don't see it currently because their is a special request for France that we have to comply with first (ANSSI certificate). Once this done, you'll be able to see it
Christian provided a direct link, but we don't know if it will work either:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libreoffice/id1630474372

Just to add a note for everybody, search should work but may default to iOS.

Cheers
Sophie

[plubius]

I noticed the same problem in the US Mac App Store but not the Canadian Mac App Store.

How Apple's Mac App Store search works is a mystery (I dealt with too many other mysteries a decade ago), but so far I have not seen the same problem with NeoOffice. I don't know if it helps, but here are the words we use in the "keywords" field in appstoreconnect:

neo,office,document,spreadsheet,text,presentation,open,libre

GitHub:
https://github.com/neooffice/NeoOffice/blob/NeoOffice-2021_branch/AppleAppStore/metadata_and_uploads_notes.txt

I cannot remember how I came up with the keywords, but they have seemed to work over the years so the only thing that I can suggest is to check that "libre" and "office" are at the beginning of the comma-delimited search words field inappstoreconnect. Maybe even add "libreoffice" for good measure. In other words, try something like "libre,office,libreoffice,...other search words...".

If you have already done the above, let me know if you have any alternative theories. I have deployed NeoOffice through the US Mac App Store since 2013 and through the Canadian Mac App Store over the last year and I am happy to share any experiences or data that may help resolve this searchability problem for LibreOffice.

Patrick