Vivaldi 1.4 gets Theme scheduling
Vivaldi 1.4, the upcoming next version of the popular web browser, will ship with a new theme scheduling feature among other things.
If you run development releases of Vivaldi, you may have noticed the new "scheduled themes" option already in the options of the web browser.
Basically, what it enables you to do is link themes to time periods, and have the browser switch between them automatically.
A simple example where this may be useful is a darker theme for night and morning hours, and a lighter theme for the rest of the day.
Vivaldi does not limit you to two different themes though. You can go all in and pick a different theme for every hour of the day for instance.
Theme Scheduling
The theme scheduling feature is available in the latest development version of Vivaldi. That's Vivaldi 1.4 RC1 at the time of writing.
You may download that version of the browser from the Vivaldi website, or use the browser's automatic update feature if you have a previous development version installed already on your computer.
Select Vivaldi > Tools > Settings or use the keyboard shortcut Alt-P to open the Settings application. Switch to themes when it opens, and locate the new Scheduled Themes option on the page.
You need to check "change theme on schedule" to activate the feature. Vivaldi will switch between a light and dark theme automatically without you having to to anything.
You may use sliders to change the time of the day themes get switched, or add new starting points with a click on the add button.
Any theme available can be selected as a scheduled theme.
You are probably wondering what happens when a starting point is reached. Vivaldi will switch to the new theme based on your configuration automatically.
This happens in the background and is an instant switching. This may be confusing at first, as you have probably never seen a web browser switch a theme automatically.
Closing Words
Theme scheduling is an interesting feature. While I cannot see myself using it for more than switching to a dark theme at night, and a lighter theme at day, others may enjoy switching themes more often than that.
As far as improvements are concerned, it would be useful if the start and end date of each theme would be displayed next to it as well. Also, maybe an option to input the time directly would be nice.
Last but not least, for the chaotic kind, a randomize option could improve things further in the theme input field.
Now You: What's your take on theme scheduling? Interesting feature?
Amazing… Vivaldi is the only one that managed to clutter and make sluggish the UI… The one thing Chromium-based browsers are excellent.
*Sigh* Never mind, since I want a Chromium-based browser in my PC, I only use the incredible Opera. These guys did fine work. Nice Win10 theme, no clutter and the most superb? The only 2 extensions I use in my Browsers, in Opera are built-in ( Mouse Gestures and Ad Blocker ).
No doubt a small number of ppl will be pleased by this.
Now let’s hope the devs will focus on REALLY useful features in the road to 1.5, like i said before some of them like mozilla’s geolocation dont need to be done from zero and likely could be ported to vivaldi without a lot of problems.
We know Vivaldi aims to be highly customisable, but do these kinds of bells & whistles fall under the definition of “customisation”? Seems that way, but how will users react to it? Every time I consider giving Vivaldi another try (after 2 goes already) I am put off by the program, and this feature reinforces that feeling without even trying it out. Sure, you don’t have to enable it, like you don’t have to enable/use bloatware on your new Windows PC. But … argh just forget it.
Macros / Batches do this and more from Windows 3.1
Shell scripts / Cron do this under Unix from the beginning of times.
Tab management would be a lot better than this. Vivaldi still chokes just like chrome did and still does when you open a large of tabs.
Btw vivaldi seems to have problems updating from one version to another example version 1.2 to version 1.3 which means I will have to manually do it.
Meanwhile they broke the browser again and V is doing a lot of disk IO.
Back to opera until they fix it…
Since Chromium still has totally broken software rendering on many Intel HD graphics solutions, Vivaldi or Brave are possessing the weakness of that Google related product line.
The source is crap, so they are sadly too.
The worse thing is that vivaldi devs got the complaints yet they didnt do anything to revert this bad change from chromium back, more than enough evidence they dont listen to their users….
Tab bar still the chrome shit?
No thanks.
Haven’t they got more important things to deal with?
They do but they dont care apparently, let’s see after 1.4 final what they’ll release for ppl.
Vivaldi and Brave seem to be unable to provide a functionally superior product and I deleted them recently. The Material design implementation in Chrome 53 gives me ongoing confidence in Chrome; it remains my default browser.