Vivaldi 8.0

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-8-0/

by OuterVale • 2 months ago

371 243 2 months ago

Vivaldi is all about customization but then they categorically refuse to add extension support to their android browser.

Imo extension is the ultimate way to customize your browser experience.

It's not technical difficulties, there are open source projects that have such support.

I also don't believe it's against any TOS because some of these browser are available in the Google play store.

I just don't get why they refuse to do that.

hvb22• 2 months ago

Because of stuff like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207660

If you don't have the ability to police extensions you're basically putting your users up for sale?

joshuaissac• 2 months ago

But they support extensions on desktop.

The problem you linked to also happened on desktop because there is no VSCode for phones.

atraac• 2 months ago

Your users don't have to use those extensions, so I don't understand how that's relevant? People who do, should be made aware of risks and that's it. This is not a good argument against taking away their option to have that customization.

eviks2• 2 months ago

No, if that were true, there would be no extension support on non-mobile

zerr• 2 months ago

They can add support for Chrome and Edge extensions marketplaces.

retrochameleon• 2 months ago

How is this an argument when you can use extensions on the desktop version?

Markoff• 2 months ago

I use on desktop Vivaldi, on Android I can recommend Cromite (some people like as well Helium and Ultimatum)

sys_647388• 2 months ago

Probably it's a very low request priority. I use Vivaldi on Android with the built in blocking at strict. The last thing I remotely have interest in are Extensions in Android Vivalid.

aucisson_masque3• 2 months ago

Probably it's a very low request priority.

Oh no it's requested a lot. You just got to go in their forum to see it.

tredre34• 2 months ago

You also can't import bookmarks on Android. The officially recommended way is to sign up for a sync account and verify it (they don't accept throwaway emails), install on desktop, import on desktop, then sync to mobile.

aucisson_masque3• 2 months ago

That's bad, there is no reason whatsoever you shouldn't be able to import bookmark on the phone.

I believe they should just ditch the android version if they don't want to put any effort in it.

Bingflatops• 2 months ago

Looks way better and almost everything is quite cohesive but then they add the weird arrow with an uggly box around it in the top right.

sagacity• 2 months ago

You can just right-click and hide it, though.

Barbing4• 2 months ago

Respect the tremendous amount of work that went into this!

I appreciate the intention to protect my privacy. How does that square with Manifest V2 deprecation as dictated by the adtech company (Google)?

Also, for years I’ve been uncomfortable using Chromium as I’m uncomfortable raising that statistic any more, since I don’t want the Internet to be designed for one particular engine. Maybe Vivaldi 9.0 will be the biggest design overhaul of all time and even refactor based on Gecko like Firefox :)

ahofmann• 2 months ago

Vivaldi is the browser, where I always wonder why it doesn't get mentioned in all the privacy enhanced browsers. It's the only browser for me, that reliably filters out all ads with ublock origin while working on all websites without any problems. Also the company behind Vivaldi is not in USA/China/Russia, which also helps from my point of view.

turblety3• 2 months ago

Because it's a proprietary closed source fork of Google Chromium. There's nothing to trust. If it's free and closed source, you are the product.

isodev• 2 months ago

you are the product

Then we need to have a discussion about that because in case of Vivaldi you are in fact not the product.

gib4442• 2 months ago

Privacy enhanced? lol. Install the Android version (similar to desktop I imagine):

- The choice in the wizard defaults to no blocking of ads and trackers

- Third Party cookies enabled by default

- WebRTC IP leaking is the default

- No option not to persist history/permanent incognito mode

Etc

I imagine it leaks your list of extensions just like chromium too

tredre34• 2 months ago

- No option not to persist history/permanent incognito mode

That's something I've always wanted.

Only Firefox seems to offer it. Firefox can also open external links in incognito (eg if you tap a link in another app, it will open in a firefox private window)

Duckduckgo browser and Brave can be set to delete all data upon start, which is similar but not quite the same because things are still persisted until they're cleaned up at the next start (they say it happens on exit but it really happens on start, because catching exit isn't reliable or something).

Brave also has no way to have exceptions for certain websites (Duckduckgo can, they call it fireproofing).

eviks2• 2 months ago

If you have been using Vivaldi for years, you have your setup exactly as you want it and you would not trade it for anything.

You wouldn't be able to even if you wanted because there is no good way to export/import your changes for the trade to happen

Otherwise removing a few borders seems a bit underwhelming for a major version bump

portmanteaufu• 2 months ago

I'd like to try Vivaldi, but the combination of being (partially) closed-source [1] and free-as-in-beer makes me feel like I must be the product.

Do they do any sort of third-party auditing of the closed parts?

[1] https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...

dgellow2• 2 months ago

Im not sure I understand their business model. I don’t see any paid offering on their website

zamadatix5• 2 months ago

Search engine deals are HUGE for browsers. They're e.g. what has funded Mozilla with many billions over the last 20 years. Mozilla has tried to diversify but everything else has pales in comparison (and the donations are basically a joke).

It scales up with usage as well. Not that Safari needed funding, but Google pays Apple upwards of $20,000,000,000 per year for the privilege of being the default for that user base.

newscombinatorY• 2 months ago

Took 2 seconds to startpage* this: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/

*screw Google and their AI search

dijksterhuis4• 2 months ago

source code is apparently* available to audit: https://vivaldi.com/source

* on my phone, can’t inspect the tars

brnt3• 2 months ago

Tarballs every 2 months, and we know these don't give you the Vivaldi browser as they supply it.

I don't trust them one bit. There was that telemetry analysis that showed Vivaldi as a very noisy browser.

mossTechnician• 2 months ago

Confusingly, that page only provides the changes to the Google Chromium source that allows their UI to run. (I'm not sure it would be easy to discern this without already knowing the source is not fully open.)

https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/privacy/is-vivaldi-open-sou...

mrweasel• 2 months ago

It's a lovely browser, and a lot of work has clearly been put into it. I should like it, because I used Opera for ages (in the Presto era), but it's just a little to busy for me.

There's way to much stuff, to many feature and when the rendering engine is just Blink, I don't really see much of a reason to use it over Firefox.

Nice work though and wonderful to see a 3rd party browser maker giving it a go.

ktallett2• 2 months ago

Two questions, how can you trust closed source? And how are they already on release 8.0; what are these significant improvement each time or is it like apple's yearly release?

sevg• 2 months ago

If version 8.0 makes you raise your eyebrows, just wait til you see what version Firefox and Chrome are on!

ktallett2• 2 months ago

Which is even more nuts, especially with the features removed from Firefox sometimes like the grouped tabs removal then regain.

Mashimo2• 2 months ago

And how are they already on release 8.0;

First release was 11 years ago. Why not?

Also there is no standard for version releases. I mean there probably is, but none that you have to follow.

how can you trust closed source?

Same as using Android or windows or iOS.

adrian_b3• 2 months ago

With Firefox, especially with Firefox on Linux, which always had and still has poor GPU support, I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all. So I must keep a backup browser, which is normally Vivaldi, because typically any site that works in Chrome also works in Vivaldi.

Moreover, Vivaldi has a great advantage over both Firefox and Chrome, in it the command to print a Web page usually works fine, while in both Firefox and Chrome it almost never works correctly.

Both Firefox and Chrome are almost never able to render correctly a "printed" page, even if they render the same page perfectly on screen. In the printed page, the graphic elements have almost always wrong sizes, which results in overlapped or invisible page elements. I suppose that this is caused by the fact that many Web pages stupidly use element sizes in pixels, instead of using length units, e.g. points or inches or mm, and both Firefox and Chrome might scale pixels wrongly when rendering for resolutions that differ from that of the screen, while Vivaldi scales them correctly.

Besides the "Print" command, the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands, as alternatives to keyboard shortcuts, so you do not need to move the hand from the mouse while browsing.

dijksterhuis4• 2 months ago

the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands

vivaldi was doing something weird for me, can’t exactly remember what now. seemingly unprompted it would switch tabs or go back in history or something.

turns out i’d tried to be clever, set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD

Barbing4• 2 months ago

set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD

Classic

To do list: make huge spreadsheet of hotkeys across programs and periodically feed them back to myself as flashcards based on [lack of] usage

KeyCue didn’t seem to cut it but maybe skill issue

netsharc• 2 months ago

mouse gestures

Vivaldi is made by people who left Opera after it was bought by a Chinese company, and the mouse gestures are similar. Ny favorites: "Hold right mouse button, click left" is the browser back gesture, and "hold left, click right" is forward.

tuoret• 2 months ago

I switched to Firefox when Opera ditched Presto and mouse gestures were the thing I missed the most (along with windowed tabs). Took me a long time to stop trying to use them, those commands were etched deep in my muscle memory. I remember trying a few extensions but they never managed to replicate how smoothly it worked in Opera.

You can tell the Vivaldi devs care about that kind of stuff. I don't want to use a chromium-based browser as my daily driver, but I like a lot of what they're doing.

dmos622• 2 months ago

I ran into broken printing when I was trying to turn web pages into PDFs. Both Chrome and Firefox couldn't "print" without breaking layout.

Barbing4• 2 months ago

Tried Print Edit WE? “Recommended” extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we...

jorvi• 2 months ago

Vivaldi is the only Chromium browser that actually breaks sites that work on Chromium(based) browsers itself. Mostly stuff like government ID login. A few European logins don't work, and haven't for years (!) with Vivaldi not giving a crap despite ample reports. Extra ironic since Vivaldi is touted as an EU alternative to US tech.

surgical_fire• 2 months ago

Not sure what country you lived in, but having lived in different European countries, I never found this issue.

Have been a Vivaldi user for many years.

nar001• 2 months ago

Do you have examples of websites that don't work? Both because I'm curious and also so the devs can look into it?

Unai• 2 months ago

I really doubt that's as general of an occurrence as you make it up to be. There's a particular government process I can only do on Edge (no other browser works, chromium or not). For a certain login process in a different branch of government I can use Vivaldi or Firefox, but not Edge. I don't think you can single out a browser for this kind of thing.

sys_647388• 2 months ago

I've never seen or heard of this before. Perhaps it is a user error.

bityard3• 2 months ago

I have issues with sites on Vivaldi but it's never due to Vivaldi itself. It always ends up being that case that either uBlock Origin or Vivaldi's own built-in ad/privacy blocker ended up blocking some javascript library that the site needs.

ProTip: Try to do your thing in Guest Mode. It will almost certainly work there.

MaXtreeM• 2 months ago

I always see these kind of comments, that many sites don't work in Firefox while they do in Chrome. When I encounter a broken site I always also check it in Chrome but the times where it is actually a browser's fault is like once a year. Usually it is some blocking of cookies or something that I have enabled in Firefox. Even sites from Google which everyone seems to describe that they are specifically made to work only in Chrome I never had issues with.

RoryH• 2 months ago

Yes I agree, there was a time where it was worse and FF just did not have the same support coverage for Browser APIs etc, but now if I encounter a problem in FF I tend toward blaming the website developer for ensuring it works ok.

__jonas• 2 months ago

Most of the time I switch to Chrome it's for web apps that use APIs like Web Bluetooth or Web USB. No way to use those in Firefox as far as I'm aware.

adrian_b3• 2 months ago

Perhaps you use Firefox on Windows.

Firefox on Linux has much more problems than Firefox on Windows, mostly because it does not support many GPUs, so it frequently disables WebGL or it cannot use hardware support for playing videos, even now, in 2026. This breaks many sites.

Unlike Firefox, the Linux versions of Vivaldi/Chromium/Chrome do not appear to have any deficiencies in comparison with their Windows versions.

cassianoleal2• 2 months ago

Same experience, both on macOS and Linux.

bityard3• 2 months ago

It's crazy, but in 2026, websites still check the user agent string and will simply refuse to work if it's not one that they like. Financial and enterprise software is the worst for this. It's one of the reasons Vivaldi switched to simply copying the Chrome user agent string instead of their own.

Some sites also simply to not test their stuff on Firefox since it has such a small market share, and Firefox _does_ have minor incompatibilities that only tend to show up when using overly fancy Javascript or CSS frameworks. (But this is far less common than the first point above.)

ozgrakkurt• 2 months ago

I am on linux with amd gpu and Firefox has been so much better than chromium browsers for a very long time.

You can open whatsapp web or a pdf or most other websites and just scroll. The difference is massive.

mplanchard• 2 months ago

Firefox Linux user (wayland) here. I can’t remember the last time I had a browser issue or had to open an alternative browser.

fransje26• 2 months ago

Same here, with X11.

bennyp101• 2 months ago

Maybe I just don't surf the web as much anymore, but everything I use or click on works in Firefox on Linux, I can't remember the last time I found something that didn't work (other than some Show HN fancy graphics thing)

zimmund• 2 months ago

I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all

What kind of sites do you visit frequently? Because as a Firefox user, I rarely see issues like this and it's usually related to either chrome-specific things they didn't bother to implement in a compatible way or very cutting-edge features that are not fully available in browsers yet.

I know Firefox had issues in the past (I suffered them myself) but I don't remember having issues with it over the last bunch of years, and it's my main (only) browser.

xerox13ster2• 2 months ago

I have been using Vivaldi since it was an alpha build. It is the best browser hands down IMO. I have been here for the entire ride. I am so glad to see that there is not AI bundled in this release, which has been a major concern for me when anticipating future releases of this browser.

I hope they keep it up.

sys_647388• 2 months ago

Totally agree. It is the best browser across all platforms of mobile and desktop for me. I read on here all the excuses others make for not using Vivaldi but they don't pass the smell test for me. Long may Vivaldi prosper.

nathanmills3• 2 months ago

Being closed source doesn't pass the smell test?

AlienRobot• 2 months ago

Vivaldi is the only browser I feel actually has features. Built-in RSS client, mail client, vertical tabs, workspaces, notes, saved sessions, tab groups, side by side tabs, profiles, etc.

To put more simply, just look at how many preferences its preference dialog has compared to other browsers. It feels like nobody else is even doing anything except coming up with a new CSS property nobody is going to use every 3 months.

Everyone says they love Firefox, but every time Firefox adds a new feature it's a feature Vivaldi already had for years.

culopatin• 2 months ago

Does it have a torrent client like Opera did? I really miss that browser

rjzzleep• 2 months ago

Every time I try use Vivaldi I encounter how incredibly slow the UI is. Are all Vivaldi users running it on specced out desktops? Or is it just ao lineux UI latency issue?

zamadatix5• 2 months ago

Same, even on the absolute highest end machines. It has been a few versions since I've given it a go and I otherwise like it but the perf decline over stock Chromium, sometimes randomly appearing, is what has always steered me away again in the past.

pndy• 2 months ago

I'd guess it's the price for custom UI and customization features they're adding

alternatex• 2 months ago

Same experience with UI performance, especially on Linux (Fedora). I went back to Zen Browser because of this, but frankly most browsers are performing worse for me on Linux than on Windows.

psadauskas• 2 months ago

I've switched back and forth between Vivaldi and Firefox on Linux and MacOS for the last decade, and Vivaldi's UI feels much faster. Even on my 5yo laptop or 12yo gaming PC, I haven't noticed any real slowness with the UI, and I'm usually pretty sensitive to that.

zamadatix5• 2 months ago

I always liked Vivaldi's simple+autohide layout. Unfortunately, the 3-4 times I tried to use it over the years I always ended up giving up due to random performance regressions over stock Chromium. It's been a few versions now though, maybe it's worth a go again.

self_awareness3• 2 months ago

I was an Opera user for years. Now I'm a Vivaldi user also since a long time. Best browser, FF/Chrome doesn't come close.

dragochat2• 2 months ago

still as bloated as ever?

can't we just have tabs + tiling (either tiles in tabs, or tabs in tiles, both can work), and call it a day?

that's all I need from browsing today

Mashimo2• 2 months ago

still as bloated as ever?

That's their thing. Though a lot can be disabled.

can't we just have tabs + tiling

Maybe Min or Zen Browser is more your thing?

dragochat2• 2 months ago

both fail at supporting arbitrary tilings/splits (think vscode splits, or tmux panes)

michelsedgh• 2 months ago

Wait so you make a big announcement talking about a full new redesign but dont actually show a demo? That should be illegal

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs• 2 months ago

Not just that but the screenshots are terrible too...

RockstarSprain2• 2 months ago

Looks better than expected.

I just wish the address bar were expanding fully to the right when selected, with the "Show Full Address" setting on and right-side vertical tabs. Otherwise, one has to jump around the visible part of the address bar in order to find the right part.

Edit: details.

thunderbong3• 2 months ago

You can right-click on any part of the top bar and select 'remove'

RockstarSprain2• 2 months ago

I am not sure how this is relevant?

I am talking about limited width of the address bar (when it’s part of the right column with tabs, taking a third of screen’s width at max), not its height or any other elements.

emsign• 2 months ago

Been using Opera since the early 00s and followed the dev team to the new company Vivaldi. Using any other browser always feels like a massive downgrade to me. I'm grateful for this software. Made by people with a vision that doesn't suck completely.

ReptileMan• 2 months ago

The killer feature of vivaldi is mouse gestures on every page. The killer feature of brave is the adblocker. I wonder if I can use some AI to maintain a frankenbrowser.

notorandit• 2 months ago

A decent solution with vertical tabs!

ValentineC• 2 months ago

Vivaldi is somehow the only Chromium-based browser whose extensions survive a macOS migration, presumably because they don't do the same extension encryption that other Chromium browsers do.

It's also fantastic for tab hoarders like me.

yard20102• 2 months ago

Guys use Vivaldi. It's a present. A browser that has a sustainable business model and interests that reconcile with the user interests - consume the web as god intended, with no literally aids and cancer ads out of the box. I switched a while ago from Firefox and while the UI is.. different, it's been a great experience. In my opinion this project and the great people behind it must be the leaders of this industry, and not the current crooked and twisted hegemony we have now.

I'm not affiliated. Happy user.

xigoi• 2 months ago

Vivaldi for Android does not support extensions, making it a non-starter for me.

princevegeta89• 2 months ago

The only browser that supports them on Android is Firefox - but Brave is my main browser and I can't seem to move away from it

notachatbot123• 2 months ago

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ lists

- Partner deals with search engines - Partner deals with bookmark partners - Partner deals through Direct Match - https://vivaldi.com/blog/privacy-without-compromise-proton-v...

How are integrated ads and dispatch of user data to third-parties sustainable sources of income?

abrowne• 2 months ago

Sustainable means those sources of income will continue, not that they are positive for users.

tuananh• 2 months ago

a closed-source browser is a non-starter for me.

dismalaf4• 2 months ago

https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...

It's open in all of the ways that matter, basically they just want to protect their look and feel.

zb3• 2 months ago

Furthermore I don't see a clear business model there that isn't about injecting ads.

ktm5j5• 2 months ago

Can I ask why?

m-axiom2• 2 months ago

Good thing then, that you can download sources from: https://vivaldi.com/source/

AegirLeet• 2 months ago

The real hegemony is the Blink hegemony. Google (an advertising company) can pretty much unilaterally dictate web standards. A terrible state of affairs for the web. That's the real issue and using another Chrome reskin is never going to fix it.

DavideNL• 2 months ago

For those wondering...:

"Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the free and open-source Chromium project. Blink is by far the most-used browser engine, due to the market share dominance of Google Chrome and the fact that many other browsers are based on the Chromium code."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)

_verandaguy• 2 months ago

This is the main reason I stay away from Vivaldi; using Firefox is, for all of Mozilla's borderline comical mismanagement, a protest vote against Blink (and previously, Chromium).

calvinmorrison• 2 months ago

Blink is a virtual machine. It's like complaining about the Hegemony of Perl

spinningarrow2• 2 months ago

I actively used Vivaldi for several months until recently - on my Mac it would intermittently crash for no reason I could find. I’ve since switched to ungoogled-chromium - it’s only a couple of weeks so it’s early days but so far it’s been very stable.

sys_647388• 2 months ago

Sounds like a you problem. It never crashes on me.

dncornholio• 2 months ago

aids and cancer, seriously?

slig2• 2 months ago

Closed source and based on Webkit? At least Brave is open source.

kavok• 2 months ago

I’m pretty sure Brave and Vivaldi are both based on Chromium/Blink not WebKit.

nanook2• 2 months ago

reposting here since I feel like this is a big deal and under reported.

beware, their sync will go down for weeks and you may lose all your data. https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1hgfmoh/vivaldi_s... https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/1htf6l7/all...

brnt3• 2 months ago

interests that reconcile with the user interests

How are you paying them? And have you done any network analysis on it recently (I really would like to know!)?

satvikpendem• 2 months ago

It's Chromium so I'll continue using Firefox

kurtis_reed• 2 months ago

I tried Vivaldi a couple of years ago and it was slow as fuck

andai2• 2 months ago

The UI was written in Javascript I believe. At least a few years ago when I tried it. I was pretty happy with it except for the lag which made it unusable on my hardware.

It is very much in the spirit of the old Opera browser. I miss the days when software was trying to be as cool as possible instead of trying to be as lame as possible. (God what a concept!)

It's good to see someone still trying.

Imustaskforhelp• 2 months ago

I hope you try out zen browser as well, It is really customizable and with Ublock origin installed, It becomes one of the best browsers.

And it is built on firefox's web engine itself which imo is an added benefit compared to blink on which vivaldi is from, @AegirLeet's comments about Blink hegemoney is true but also there shouldn't necessarily just be one web browser engine imo and that too created by google (blink), one can criticize mozilla/firefox and that is true but you aren't limited to firefox, there are zen browser, floorp, librewolf etc.

I highly recommend you to test zen-browser if you haven't already!

saghm• 2 months ago

I still can't really get behind the idea of a closed-source browser. Market dynamics aside, Chromium is at least open source (and if anything, most of the stuff that's bundled into the version of it that makes Chrome isn't particularly desirable to me anyhow). Firefox is not nearly bad enough for me to want to swap to a browser where the business model is the selling point.

colordrops4• 2 months ago

Nope, I don't use closed source browsers. Hell no.

m-axiom2• 2 months ago

Have you tried to google "vivaldi source"? You might be suprised

Saris• 2 months ago

It's closed source and chromium based, it's also really ugly looking IMO. The Android version also doesn't support addons so that's a huge fail. I'll stick with Zen.

andrewla• 2 months ago

I may be a bit unorthodox here but to me the user interest is in minimizing the amount that it attempts to modify the web. Ad blocking is frankly not something I want my browser to do. I want it to make it hard to advertise -- things like forbidding third party cookies, preventing browser fingerprinting, allowing text selection always, supporting dev tools and inspection, etc. Basically trying to respect the fact that it is a user agent and not a "server agent". This means killing off features like integrated sign-in and probably search result pre-fetching.

The reality is that if you are using ad blocking, you are free-riding off of users who are not using them. It's an illusion to believe that "ad blocking" can actually work. If "ad blockers" were universal, then sites would just work around it -- instead of serving from third-party domains they would use plugins to serve on the first-party page. This will make everything slower and more heavyweight. Right now it's just not worth doing it.

theusus• 2 months ago

For me on Windows. It hangs a lot. Thus I uninstalled.

branon• 2 months ago

Closed-source/proprietary and downstream of Chrom* so contributes to browser monoculture. Thanks but no thanks, I'm sticking with Firefox.

FlyingSnake• 2 months ago

Used Vivaldi for years but it kept breaking my workflows and would wipe out my meticulously assembled tab groups. After few such gaffes I switched to Brave. I really wanted Vivaldi to work but can’t let it break workflows.

ndom91• 2 months ago

Another happy user here - it's the power users chromium fork. Criminally underrated. It's a small Norwegian team with no VC funding and a sustainable business model.

I understand if you want to stick with Firefox, but until Ladybird and co are ready for prime time, I'm sticking with Vivaldi.

This major release bump is a bit disapointing though. Was expecting some more headlining features than just a bit of a UI clean up.

ACS_Solver• 2 months ago

I moved to Vivaldi before its 1.0 release and am still happy with, also surprised to see it mentioned so rarely. My previous browser was Firefox but I struggled with a few updates changing things I liked, mostly manageable with about:config until they landed the Australis UI. Made the jump to Vivaldi and it's been pretty great overall.

Page tiling is perhaps the killer feature, but overall I like how Vivaldi is a browser for power users who know how they want to use the web. I find it refreshing in the era of browsers trying to be very thin terminals. The only thing missing from Vivaldi is being truly FOSS instead of their hybrid source-available model.

nanook2• 2 months ago

beware, their sync will go down for weeks and you will lose all your data. https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1hgfmoh/vivaldi_s...

thunderbong3• 2 months ago

I've had sync not working occasionally but I've never ever lost my data in over a decade of using Vivaldi.

cassianoleal2• 2 months ago

Get away from Big Tech
You deserve better

Probably better to avoid (Chromium-based) Vivaldi then.

ch_123• 2 months ago

I loved Opera until they got rid of their in-house browser engine and became a Chromium fork, losing a lot of the functionality and UX I liked about the older versions. Ever since then, I have been very reluctant to use a closed source browser, since I don't want to have to go through another rug-pull of having a company completely change a browser without ability for the community to make a fork.

deafpolygon• 2 months ago

This is Vivaldi. It always has been.

Wonder if the site dev was thinking of the astronaut pointing a gun at another astronaut meme when they put this in.

trilogic• 2 months ago

It is a great browser, thank you. Would you consider to add an option that signals scam websites and especially the ones that do not give the option of denying cookies or making it helly difficult being so in non compliance with gdpr. That is some data that you will be glad to sell, we get a better service and Eu warriors make some money on it.

laylower• 2 months ago

How does it compare with firefox? Can you add ublock and noscript?

Ah nevermind I see a chromium fork, I skip

weavie2• 2 months ago

Vivaldi is the only browser where you can actually disable Ctrl+W from closing a tab. And that is why fat fingered I uses it.

undume• 2 months ago

Firefox also provides such an option, see about:keyboard

weavie2• 2 months ago

Wow! Is this a new feature? I swear it wasn't there when I looked into it a few years ago. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

agotterer• 2 months ago

I used Vivaldi for many years and was a huge advocate. The problem for me was the browser got too bloated and buggy. They kept adding functionality that for me wasn’t necessary. For example: built in Proton VPN support, calendars, email functionality, notes, a game arcade. I don’t want any of that bundled in my browser. I want my browser to be lite weight.

I eventually switched to Edge a few years ago because it was nice and lite. Now I’m seeing the same pattern play out as they add copilot, shopping, and rewards programs.

What browser should I check out next? Some must haves: workspaces, vertical tabs, and chromium extension support.

voidfunc• 2 months ago

Firefox?

anon7000• 2 months ago

Firefox generally has a lot of the same extensions. I use Zen browser (the OSS “arc-style” Firefox-based browser) on personal devices and generally like it a lot. It replicates a lot of what Arc did

qbit42• 2 months ago

I found replacements for the Chrome extensions I was using and switched to Zen, which builds off of Firefox and closely resembles Arc (RIP).

It might not be the best security idea to rely on a relatively obscure browser like this, but I find it very pleasant to use.

sys_647388• 2 months ago

Edge? You don't want the 'bloat' but you are OK with a browser siphoning all your info to M$ to be added to the borg entity.

sroux• 2 months ago

+1 for Zen, its great

brandonkal2• 2 months ago

I was also a huge fan of Vivaldi. I’d recommend Helium or Orion (desktop only). People knock on Edge but it actually is a nice browser. When on a Windows box I don’t own I use it instead of Chrome. Edge has the best text-to-speech engine in reader mode which I reach for even on macOS on occasion. That’s the only reason I have it on macOS.

x11n• 2 months ago

Recently switched to Helium, a super lightweight Chromium-based browser. It has vertical tabs, extension support, and tab groups and profiles, if that's what you mean by workspaces.

xtracto• 2 months ago

Pure love from me to Vivaldi.

The only browser that allows me to tile 3,4,5... pages in the same view. Or to group pages into "stacks" or many other small but useful perks.

miroljub• 2 months ago

Why should I use it instead of, for example, Brave?

daniel_iversen• 2 months ago

I’d love to know that as well. Long time Brave user that was curious about Vivaldi a long time ago and can’t remember why I went in the other direction. I want privacy and battery life on macOS

brandonkal2• 2 months ago

Great job on the design refresh! I was a heavy Vivaldi user and especially liked the integrated tiling and tab grouping. But over time it got more and more bloated and performance suffered so now I just use vanilla Safari (didn’t expect that) for most browsing plus Helium when I need to test in Chromium.

I use Aerospace for tiling everything now but it breaks Safari scrolling performance so when that becomes annoying I force the Safari window to floating mode.

RandomGerm4n• 2 months ago

No, thanks. Vivaldi is proprietary software and therefore not trustworthy. Since the source code isn't fully available, there's no way to verify whether an update might secretly add a feature that collects data. Since the source code isn't fully available and you can't compile it yourself, there's no way to prevent a feature that collects data from being secretly added during an update. The reasoning behind why it isn't open source is also complete nonsense. Just because it's easy to create a fork doesn't change the fact that most users will stick with the original as long as the fork doesn't offer significant improvements. With Firefox, people aren't flocking to the existing forks either.

butz• 2 months ago

It is always good to have more than one browser.

startpage_com4• 2 months ago

Is mouse support in Vivaldi still broken?

alentred• 2 months ago

I have no idea what this is about, but this comment sounds like it was posted from the 90s. Do we also need to compile an extension to support playing *.wav files in it?

Sorry, couldn't resist... :)

startpage_com4• 2 months ago

I believe MiddleClickAutoscroll was broken in last "stable" GNU/Linux version. I can check once I'm on my laptop.

gosukiwi• 2 months ago

Another Chrome skin

bityard3• 2 months ago

Well, fuck.

One of the main reasons I switched to Vivaldi a few years ago was that it allowed and even advertised a "classic" browser experience. By which I mean: tabs that behaved like tabs, visual separation, not a lot of useless whitespace and corner-radius-maxxed borders everywhere.

Looks like that's all gone now and Vivaldi is just yet another generic "flat design" browser. Time to look for something else...

iza• 2 months ago

The old look is still available. Settings > Themes > Editor > Coloring Mode

You can also adjust density, rounded corners, transparency, blur, etc.

encom• 2 months ago

  >our biggest design overhaul, ever
  >A new look for a new era

Oh god no, just STOP. It's fine the way it is! I dread these headlines from any software project, because it's always worse. Always - and I have to spend time trying restore things back to how it was. Why do software developers do this?

F3nd0• 2 months ago

What else are they supposed to do, when the new eras just keep coming every other year?

noisy_boy• 2 months ago

I use Vivaldi because of its Workspaces which have so much better UX than tab groups. I don't need to see my Social or my Tech tab group until I'm switching for it; Firefox shows them all the time - atleast I haven't found a way to hide them and associated tabs until I need them without having to launch a new window. In Vivaldi, they are ready to use immediately upon switching while keeping everything in the same window keeping my taskbar clean. All this while not making my CPU fans run like a jet engine.

I would rather have this experience with Firefox but they are probably more busy focusing on email, vpn and whatever the flavor of the month is.

toddmorey• 2 months ago

It’s my daily browser. Small glitches occasionally and can lag chrome releases, but the best absolute non-adware browser with powerful features.

I have it configured to be ultra minimal with the look of Arc that I loved.

dherikb• 2 months ago

I mainly use Vivaldi because it has the best vertical tabs experience among the browsers.

ofalkaed• 2 months ago

I switched to Vivaldi years ago because I got sick of dealing with extensions; an update broke a few of my long relied on extensions and a search for alternatives showed hundreds of options. A few hours into my search for replacements I found a post somewhere by someone in a similar situation, one of the responses was "just install Vivaldi" and I did. In all the years since they have not made one change that has caused me grief or affected my use in the slightest, never have had to learn new features or adjust the way I work, I just get a new icon in the sidebar on occasion which I can ignore until I get curious or get sick of seeing it and remove it.

efilife• 2 months ago

LLM generated slop.

This isn’t about making the browser look simpler. It’s about making the structure behind it more coherent. This makes everything you see feel like part of the same system.

then the unicode decorations

BrenBarn2• 2 months ago

Vivaldi 8.0: our biggest design overhaul, ever
If you have been using Vivaldi for years, you have your setup exactly as you want it and you would not trade it for anything.

The thing so many software makers seem to not understand is that if I have been using something for years and have my setup exactly as I want it, then I do not want any overhauls.

self_awareness3• 2 months ago

True, but long term users often do not understand that if a project that is expected to make money doesn't try to acquire new userbase, it stops being relevant fast.

BrenBarn2• 2 months ago

The big-picture view of what you're saying is "anything that does not expand dies", and I think that is a fundamental problem with the way our society works. It should be possible to succeed by just remaining stable.

AuthAuth• 2 months ago

I want to like another browser than Firefox but none of the other browsers present any interesting features and all come with web destroying downsides.

dankwizard• 2 months ago

I would like to use Vivaldi but from my understanding they harvest just as much user data as Chrome. I'll stick to Brave for now.

longnighthn• 2 months ago

the largest plorblem preventing me choose vivaldi as all platforms browser, is that its mobile version , still don't support add browser extension, and they seem won't add this feature in future.

meixger• 2 months ago

There are some very annoying bugs or quirks unfixed since years. I tried very hard to like Vivaldi, but it is impossible to use it as a web developer. "If DevTools in focus not possible to switch to another browser tab with CTRL+TAB" or "Text input loosing focus after switching tabs" are some examples.

sharts• 2 months ago

I wonder if they have a way to sync profiles, extensions, history, etc across devices + mobile without needing to create an account. Similar to what brave does. Oh well

tau255• 2 months ago

Vivaldi was only an option until Google removed any real way to run adblocking extensions from Chromium source. If there was a fork of Chromium allowing Ublock Origin to run it could be considered but as it is now there is no real point to consider Vivaldi or any other Chromium based browsers if you want real ad blocking.

Used Vivaldi and it was always slower and more clunkier than Chrome/Chromium but it had its advantages. The team behind it was old Opera team and tried/tries to bring that feel back to the browser with some success. I had been user of old Presto based Opera, the Blink version wasn't really what I looked for and the change of ownership was really questionable.

Vivaldi 8.0

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