If you wish to attempt a brand new internet browser and have at the least a modicum of tech savviness, Vivaldi is what I often advocate.
Vivaldi launched simply over a decade in the past with a spotlight squarely on energy customers. It presents an abundance of tab administration instruments, endlessly customizable keyboard shortcuts, and a seemingly infinite record of settings to make the browser behave the best way you need it to.
Just as importantly, Vivaldi is the uncommon tech software that feels prefer it’s fully in your facet. It doesn’t collect your browsing data, it has an easy-to-read privacy policy, and it by no means tries to push you into bizarre cryptocurrency schemes or VPN subscriptions. The firm is employee-owned and doesn’t have to leap on new fads simply to fulfill buyers.
But as somebody who’s been using Vivaldi since the beginning, I’ve additionally grown pissed off with the browser. In some methods, it’s much less highly effective than different browsers that don’t explicitly cater to energy customers, and it’s lacking some options that will be effectively inside its mission to supply.
While I all the time discover myself again with Vivaldi, the next enhancements would discourage me from contemplating leaping ship.
Commit to supporting uBlock Origin
Michael Crider / Foundry
uBlock Origin is a superb advert blocker and one which’s wildly common amongst tech fanatics, however Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi received’t help it ceaselessly with out intervention. That’s as a result of Google is shifting to a brand new extension platform referred to as Manifest V3 and regularly hindering users from installing uBlock Origin (and different Manifest V2 extensions) from its Chrome Web Store, which Vivaldi depends on.
Vivaldi has made it clear that it has no plans to maintain supporting uBlock Origin. In a June 2024 blog post, the corporate supported Google’s transfer to Manifest V3 and pointed to its built-in ad-and-tracking-blocker as a viable various to third-party choices. “Here at Vivaldi, it’s always been our policy to build the most important functionality into the browser, so you don’t have to trust an unknown third party and worry that it’s in danger of going away,” the corporate wrote.
Sorry, however that’s a cop-out. Vivaldi’s built-in blocking instruments are less effective for privacy than other browsers and so they’re much less customizable than uBlock Origin. Besides, different browsers comparable to Brave and Opera have discovered methods to maintain making uBlock Origin accessible. (Ironically, Vivaldi founder Jon von Tetzchner was one in all Opera’s co-founders, and began Vivaldi in 2015 as a result of he was fed up with how his old company had watered down the product.)
A browser that prides itself on letting customers craft their very own experiences shouldn’t be deciding which ad-blocking instruments these folks can use. It needs to be serving to them use whichever ones they need.
Sync your complete expertise throughout units
Jared Newman / Foundry
Like most different browsers, Vivaldi presents a Sync characteristic for accessing your bookmarks, historical past, and open tabs throughout all units. What’s lacking, although, is a option to sync your full Vivaldi setup so that you get the identical actual expertise on any and each machine.
For instance, Vivaldi has a helpful tab administration characteristic referred to as “Workspaces,” which helps you to toggle between completely different teams of pages in your tab bar. This is useful for those who’re juggling a number of tasks and need separate lists of tabs for every. As it stands, there’s no option to entry the identical Workspaces throughout units. You can use Vivaldi’s synced tabs view to see what’s in your Workspaces and open every web page manually, however you’ll be able to’t arrange a gaggle of tabs that’s immediately accessible all over the place.
Vivaldi’s Web Panels don’t sync throughout units both. Web Panels are an ideal Vivaldi characteristic, letting you shortly look at favourite websites by way of a slide-out sidebar view, however setting them up takes a whole lot of effort and time. When you progress to a different system, you need to do it once more. Vivaldi doesn’t even sync themes throughout units, so the browser could look fully completely different if you transfer from one system to a different.
Surely I’m not the one one who makes use of Vivaldi on multiple PC? Having my complete setup and all my tab collections synced throughout units can be immensely useful—probably sufficient to warrant paying for—however Vivaldi doesn’t supply something near that proper now.
Bring extensions to the cellular app
Jared Newman / Foundry
Extensions are an important browser software for energy customers, permitting you so as to add new options, alter web site conduct, and get faster entry to essential data. On the desktop, I take advantage of extensions to replace the standard new tab page, check Amazon price histories, generate private email aliases, and extra.
But none of these customizations can be found in Vivaldi’s cellular app, which doesn’t help extensions in any respect. To make issues worse, a bunch of Vivaldi’s rivals already supply extensions on cellular:
- Orion for iOS lets customers set up extensions from both the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons.
- Firefox presents thousands of extensions for its Android app.
- Microsoft Edge offers extensions for its Android app as effectively.
Mobile extension help needs to be a slam dunk for Vivaldi. Instead, it’s one other space the place different browsers that aren’t as targeted on energy customers are in some way doing a greater job.
Build a best-in-class pill app
Jared Newman / Foundry
I’ve been changing a few of my laptop computer use with an iPad Pro recently, and one factor I miss is accessing the complete Vivaldi expertise.
Vivaldi’s pill app is nothing just like the desktop model. There’s no vertical tab help, no Web Panels, no Workspaces, no lately closed tabs view, no user-made themes, no customized keyboard shortcuts, no energetic tab search… I may go on and on.
Most of those omissions apply to Vivaldi’s telephone app as effectively, however I’d charitably anticipate a extra light-weight browser on a smaller display like that. On a bigger pill, the consumer expertise ought to come quite a bit nearer to what Vivaldi is like on desktop, in any other case there’s not a lot level in utilizing it. For now, I’ve simply been utilizing Orion’s iPad app as a substitute, as a result of at the least it helps extensions (which, once more, Vivaldi’s app doesn’t).
Do extra and do it higher, Vivaldi
Vivaldi lately made a giant to-do about the way it’s not building AI into its browser, arguing that AI options sap the net of pleasure and customers of curiosity. I don’t have an issue with Vivaldi taking that stance, however it doesn’t inherently assist the browser get any higher.
Instead of defining itself by what it’s not, Vivaldi ought to take a stand on what it is and what it’s truly attempting to be. To me, meaning constructing extra methods to customise and management the browser expertise for individuals who deeply care about such issues.
Further studying: I got sick of Chrome’s BS and switched to Vivaldi