Working with Baby Whale
Previews & LibreOffice
You can inspect what Baby Whale built without leaving the session. Preview quality depends on one optional component: LibreOffice.
Built-in previews
Every deliverable card has a Preview button. Out of the box, Baby Whale parses the file itself and renders a structural preview — sheets, values, and text so you can sanity-check a workbook or skim a document immediately.
Pixel-perfect with LibreOffice
With LibreOffice installed, previews render the file exactly as an office suite would — real layout, chart rendering, and pagination. It also enables formula recalculation, so a workbook preview shows computed results, not just stored formulas.
- In-app setup — when Baby Whale doesn't find LibreOffice, previews offer a one-time setup that installs it for you. Accept once and previews upgrade when the component lands.
- macOS — download the
.dmgfrom libreoffice.org, orbrew install --cask libreoffice. - Windows — the official installer from libreoffice.org, or
winget install TheDocumentFoundation.LibreOffice. - Linux — your package manager, e.g.
apt install libreoffice.
After installing, restart Baby Whale — it re-scans on launch and previews upgrade automatically. LibreOffice is free and open source (MPL-2.0); it stays entirely on your machine.
Nothing breaks without it. File creation and analysis never depend on LibreOffice. It only affects how faithfully previews render.
Which preview am I seeing?
| Parser preview | LibreOffice preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Layout fidelity | Structural | Pixel-true |
| Formulas | Shown as stored | Recalculated |
| Charts | Described | Rendered |
| Needs install | No | Yes, one-time |
When in doubt, open the file in Excel or PowerPoint — it's a real file, and the preview is a convenience, not the source of truth.