How To Change The Speed Dial Size In Opera

Martin Brinkmann
May 25, 2009
Updated • Jun 26, 2017
Opera
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12

The development team of the Opera Internet browser introduced speed dial a while ago in the web browser. Speed Dial displays up to nine websites that are added by the user as thumbnails whenever a new blank tab is opened in the web browser.

This gives the user another option of visiting popular websites without having to access the bookmarks or typing in the domain names or keyword shortcuts directly into the Internet browser.

Speed Dial displays nine website thumbnails in a 3x3 matrix by default. Some users of the Opera Internet browser might want to change the speed dial size to display additional (or less) website thumbnails. This can be done by editing the speeddial.ini configuration file that is found in the Opera profile folder. Windows users find the file in the Application Data folder.

All that needs to be done to change the speed dial size is to open the speeddial.ini file and add the following three lines to the end of the file.

[Size]
Rows=x
Columns=y

where x and y are the number of rows and columns that should be displayed.

4x4

8x8

opera speed dial

Some sizes are obviously too large to offer the benefit that Speed Dial is supposed to offer to the Internet user. It might however still be interesting for some users who want to increase the speed dial size slightly.

More recent versions of the Opera web browser come with options to change the number of columns directly in the browser.

The Opera browser displayed that option in the UI on the Speed Dial in previous versions, but it has since been removed.

opera speed dial size change

You can still change the number of columns in the settings:

  1. Load opera://settings in the browser's address bar.
  2. Make sure you have enabled "show advanced settings".
  3. Open the Browser section on the Settings page.
  4. Scroll down until you find the Start page section.
  5. The "Maximum number of columns" preference there determins how many columns Speed Dial uses.
  6. Allowed values have a range between 3 and 11.

The change takes effect immediately, but won't change new tab pages that are already reloaded. A hit on refresh fixes this however.

Verdict

The new Opera browser has integrated options to change the Speed Dial size in the UI. That's great, but the classic Opera browser offered more flexibility when it came to supported sizes.

 

Summary
How To Change The Speed Dial Size In Opera
Article Name
How To Change The Speed Dial Size In Opera
Description
Find out how to change the size and number of websites displayed on the the classic and new Opera web browser's New Tab Page.
Author
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Allieth said on September 23, 2009 at 5:44 pm
    Reply

    Tankss for all!!!

  2. Rarst said on July 28, 2009 at 5:59 am
    Reply

    @Opera’s fan

    Had you closed/opened Opera?
    Sure you got right ini file? There sometimes can be few copies of Opera stuff around, especially if PC has multiply users.

  3. Opera's fan said on July 28, 2009 at 4:29 am
    Reply

    I did that, but it doesn’t seem to work. :(
    Does anyone happen know why?

  4. Your Friend said on May 26, 2009 at 2:54 am
    Reply

    Martine,

    Would you please tell us how did you create the background of opera’s homepage. I really like it. If you could provide us with the same picture that would be great!

    1. Anonymous said on October 4, 2010 at 2:13 am
      Reply

      If you meant the background of the Speed dail it’s the Mironix skin

      “http://my.opera.com/Kajman01/skins/get.pl?id=8321”

  5. Luis said on May 25, 2009 at 10:10 pm
    Reply

    Another problem is that after the ninth speed dial, you can’t use the shortcut for it.

  6. Tobey said on May 25, 2009 at 3:58 pm
    Reply

    Neat little tip, thanks. :)

  7. Saurabh said on May 25, 2009 at 10:08 am
    Reply

    Martin, the speed dial of Opera does not show the top 9 websites that the user has visited in the past , it shows 9 websites as specified by the user.

    1. Martin said on May 25, 2009 at 10:12 am
      Reply

      Wow you are right, why did I think otherwise?

  8. Rarst said on May 25, 2009 at 10:01 am
    Reply

    One downside is that extra cells aren’t synced with Opera Link.

    Personally 3×3 is just fine for me and I mostly use those with hotkeys (Ctrl+number).

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