Vivaldi adds a clock with alarm and timer to browser
The latest snapshot of the Vivaldi web browser displays a clock in the status bar of the browser that supports alarm and timer functionality.
One of the things that I like about Vivaldi is that its developers add all kinds of useful but optional usability features to the web browser. One of the latest feature is a clock which the developers added to the browser's status bar.The status bar is actually one of these usability features. Most web browsers, Firefox and Chrome, dropped the status bar or never made use of it.
Vivaldi has a status bar and it displays lots of options to the user, e.g. changing zoom, disabling images, capturing the page, and more.
The clock is another optional feature. While it is displayed by default, it can easily be hidden from the status bar if it is not required.
We’ve added a built in clock to the status bar. This also gives you the ability to quickly set alarms, either in the form of a count down or to a specific time in the future.
Vivaldi's team added timer and countdown functionality to the clock that you may activate when you left or right-click on the time.
A left-click displays the countdown and alarm options. Both options are self-explanatory: use countdown to have the clock count down the specified hours/minutes, and alarm to set an alarm for a specific time of the day, e.g. for meetings, lunch, or breaks.
You may assign presets to both options to re-use these with the click of the button instead of having to configure them each time you plan on using them.
A right-click displays options to set countdown or alarm presets right away, to change the display of the clock in the status bar including its style and label, and to hide the clock on the status bar.
Closing Words
A clock in the status bar may not be a revolutionary feature but it may be useful to some users of the browser. Those who have no use for the feature can hide it easily using the right-click context menu.
Now You: Do you find the new clock functionality useful?
Everyone would be a lot happier with Vivaldi if they would just fix the known bugs instead of focusing on new features. I used Vivaldi on both Windows 10 and Linux and discovered numerous bugs in just a few days of usage. Submit bug reports and nothing gets fixed. Yet they add a video game and now a timer. Just fix the bugs already.
Addendum to my other post: A timer/clock? Really? So you can see how slow it is rendering a page or scrolling, or opening a tab? Is that the purpose?
Seriously, they need to address the speed issues first. Open the browser and it takes up to ten seconds JUST TO OPEN the bookmarks tab. If on a very simple web page, it takes several seconds to scroll down one or two lines. Sure all the eye candy and “features” and actually having some sort of toolbars and status indicators is nice, but not at the price of the thing being gawdawful slow. I did have one version (before they added all kind of junk to it) that was reasonably quick, but after that I suddenly had to do things like “ignore blacklisted processors” and all sorts of other things just to get a tab to open within 2-3 seconds. And, it seems, Vivaldi’s interface IS NOT COMPATABLE with Chromium 58+ (and that’s up to what, 80 now? 22 versions of too slow, too much junk, not usable.) Of course Chromium and its derivatives have also taken a performance hit in that time… every “update” makes it slower, even with fresh installs, they lag slower & slower each version, but NOT as bad as Vivaldi, whose interface code pretty much takes up half your processor & slows web browsing to a crawl. (And every version of Firefox seems to get worse, too, no matter all the gimmicks they try like “Quantum.” which slowed FF down considerably.
I would find a cpu and ram monitor to be more useful than a clock which most desktops have as standard anyway,a visual presentation of the current cpu usage in browser would be most useful.
Hi Martin, no that is the tracking blocker (privacy), I mean an actual Ad-Blocker https://vivaldi.com/blog/snapshots/desktop/built-in-ad-blocker-vivaldi-browser-snapshot-1848-4/
P.S. Thanks for the quick response :)
Vivaldi (snapshot) has also added a native Ad Blocker, with custom filters in the works, so how is a clock in the news but not the Ad Blocker?
You mean this one: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/03/vivaldi-introduces-tracking-blocker-functionality-in-latest-build/
Honestly, this is quite brilliant imho. Recently, I was looking for a small (portable) visually appealing application for Windows to set timers and alarms quickly. My conclusion was that there wasn’t much choice at all and that it might as well be implemented in a browser.
Feels like one of those old Opera features: damn handy, but if you don’t have any use for it, it won’t be in your way.
@Iron Heart
Thank you! I feel like an idiot. I had forgotten I have Stylus for Vivaldi for a long time and I changed the unvisited link in it. Now Brave has my nice green color for unvisited link and I added Verdana Bold as the font and a Stylus style to stop gif animation. Wonderful! Now I can explore Brave!
@Mele
No problem.
Slight correction, here is the link to the stable version of Stylus, in case you do not want to use the beta version:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne?hl=de
Brave is UNUSABLE for me because there is NO way to change the visited and unvisited link colors! That makes Brave the most backward browser I have ever tried. I cannot tolerate “Microsoft Blue” for unvisited links! I have always changed the link colors to green for unvisited and purple for visited. I’ve done this for 20 years on my gecko based browsers and even IE. Sadly, this is missing from Edge so I don’t use it. Thank goodness for gecko based browsers! (And for Vivaldi and any other browsers that still allow for customization).
@Mele
You need the Stylus extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus-beta/apmmpaebfobifelkijhaljbmpcgbjbdo?hl=de
Once you have installed it, follow the instructions of the comment of “duskwuff” here: https://superuser.com/questions/726380/change-color-of-visited-links-in-chrome-33
This works in all Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Ungoogled Chromium etc. etc.
I really wish Martin would sort out this Iron Heart thing whatever the truth may be, topics are spammed to the point where things are constantly off track. Comments are moderated, why not this B.S?
GHacks has fallen so far, this never used to happen.
Guess what? YOU CAN MAKE $8732.47 per WEEK by following my simple formula!!!!!!!!! A million customers can’t be wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SIGN UP at arguewithyourselfmuch dot ugh NOW!!!
@ULBoom
The problem is not the lack of moderation – Martin Brinkmann already has moderating privilege here. The problem is the lack of a real account system which prevents the misuse of nicknames by other persons.
Cheers
Iron Heart, the original.
@Iron Heart: +1
Hi all,
I can think of at least one good reason to use a clock in a browser, especially when its possible to use it as a timer. If it uses an audio indication to let you know that a large and very long download has completed, with that capability you can say goodbye to a few extensions, or plugins designed
to do the same job, thus lightening the load on the browser, and reducing the flow of telemetry to
third parties. An alarm suitably labelled, and set for a live Internet event would be quite convenient too, much more reliable than YouTube notifications, which quite frankly, are a joke.
All in all not a bad idea, but nothing to write home about.
Btw Linux has had this capability for years, the XDG timer plugin, oh and henk forgot “the kitchen sink” and “a partridge in a pear tree” lol
Peter Newton [London UK]
Seriously? I’m all for features in a browser, but this seems unnecessary. I doubt there is any OS which Vivaldi runs on, yet it lacks a clock.
As overcustomization is killing the core idea of Vivaldi, so is the whole Bitcoin-stuff doing to the privacy-concerned Brave. I regard the latter as utterly senseless for me, because I’m not a bit interested in this whole BAT-thing, so why I should I care of it as a browser.
Vivaldi’s weakest point is a small development team adding a new feature with every new release so they are having even more to maintain with less resources than others.
Lots of people are waiting for the inbuilt email-client (I don’t) and their Android is still in Beta. Both of which where promised more than five years ago.
Cliqz will always be remembered as the greatest shame for Mozilla in the century.
@Samanto Hermes: why?
So is it true that Vivaldi has many bugs because Chromium wasn’t designed to have a customizable interface?
I don’t think that is necessarily it, I mean Opera makes quite a few changes to the “look” of Chromium and doesn’t suffer from some of the performance issues associated with Vivaldi. The issue with Vivaldi’s bugs are two-fold. One, they have an extremely small development team compared to browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or even Brave. Two, Vivaldi’s developers have prioritized adding new features rather than squashing bugs. I suspect much of this has to do with trying to add new users to the browser and the idea that new features will draw in more users than squashing bugs. Vivaldi has been pretty open that for the browser to be profitable, they project a need for 5 million users. The last number I saw from 2019 said the Vivaldi user base was 1.2 million.
What even? I don’t think their resources were use for good with this one.
The Cliqz browser is a firefox fork and I really like the privacy features. Have a read about it before rolling your eyes when you read “Cliqz”, their blog and the developer blog are interesting reads. The only problem I have with it is that it hasn’t got sync as that is a potential privacy problem and that does make it a pain with multiple devices.
The cliqz browser reference was meant for a post further up saying it’s a shame Eich didn’t fork FF. I have it installed and it’s very similar to brave, built in anti-tracking, ad blocker and https upgrades. Pretty much every preference is privacy respecting, I think it just had send crash data turned on, so better than ff defaults. All the spying and junk has been removed too. Having said that I will stick with Brave as my main browser but will keep cliqz installed as the backup.
>The cliqz browser reference was meant for a post further up saying it’s a shame Eich didn’t fork FF
Yeah why did my comment get deleted? wtf
How about adding USEFUL feature? Like baking in uBlock Origin similar to what Brave has done, before Manifest v3 hits? Or an iOS version with sync?
Just another bloated software getting more bloated.
It’s nice.
I hope so very much that Vivaldi will also add a compass that doubles as a blood pressure gauge, a face-recognition-triggered startup jingle, a simple selfie button, a daily inspirational statusbar quote, a pet food stock logger, a 100-pass secure disk wiper combined with a screen-off button, a rare bird observation logger, a remote car pre-heater (optional), a daily meal recipe suggestion, a room temperature gauge, an instant Van Gogh theme switch, a mini MIDI piano keyboard that fits in the statusbar, a smart coronavirus detection algorithm, a Mood Bar that indicates your actual mood based on the speed you hit your keyboard, and many many more web browser features we just cannot live without.
And of course we’ll need a taskbar dial that clearly shows us the latest total number of all these useful features.
@ Henk
I like the fact that your comment was posted twice.
The first time it was lmao.
The second time was rofl and lmao
More please !! :))
I hope so very much that Vivaldi will also add a compass that doubles as a blood pressure gauge, a face-recognition-triggered startup jingle, a simple selfie button, a daily inspirational statusbar quote, a pet food stock logger, a 100-pass secure disk wiper combined with a screen-off button, a rare bird observation logger, a remote car pre-heater (optional), a daily meal recipe suggestion, a room temperature gauge, an instant Van Gogh theme switch, a mini MIDI piano keyboard that fits in the statusbar, a smart coronavirus detection algorithm, a Mood Bar that indicates your actual mood based on the speed you hit your keyboard, and many many more browser features we just cannot live without.
And of course we’ll need a taskbar dial that shows the latest total number of all useful features.
@Henk: wonderful comment, LOL. +1
Actually the best thing I like about Vivaldi is its Note-taking thing on the left panel. Simple, easy, works. A clock? Meh. Already one down on the right side of taskbar. An alarm though might be handy for some.
@gemgem
Just wanted to let you know that this comment wasn’t written by me, but by a troll impersonating me:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/?unapproved=4456237&moderation-hash=5cf76e62b175b9771c441de997e88cf5#comment-4456221
It’s rather obvious that this idiot is trying to make persiflage out of my posts, please ignore him.
While I can appreciate Vivaldi’s constant push to add new features to its browsers, I really wish they would do more to address existing bugs that are present. The new PiP feature is a disaster and unlike 99% of Vivaldi’s other features, it cannot be turned off.
Performance is never going to be Vivaldi’s strength, that’s just the nature of the browser, but it would be nice if it was a least a stable experience that didn’t annoy a user. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case with Vivaldi.
Good idea, I use a taskbar extension (T-Clock) to have a countdown clock since I need this very often. Presets are important.
But I don’t like Vivaldi having this status bar. Monitors are widescreen and this wastes important space.
In Vivaldi you can move toolbar buttons around holding Shift, or even removing them, in that case you can move the clock to the address bar. Also, let’s not forget it’s work in progress.
This silliness just illustrates everything that is WRONG with Vivaldi. Vivaldi is the only browser where I have to use a third party extension to set the cache to zero. All other browsers have that ability built into the browser for as long as I can recall. (Of course, I needed a cache when I had dialup but I got broadband in 2001 and had no need then or ever since for a cache).
I see the time in the lower right corner (and the date) of my taskbar. I think I have seen this since my first computer (Windows 98). So, why does Viivaldi want to reinvent the wheel? UGH.
This is a very useful feature when going fullscreen with only the address bar enabled, features that other browsers don’t have, because you can drag the clock holding Shift to the address bar. Fullscreen as known hides your OS taskbar but with Vivaldi you can always know what time it is. Alarm, countdown are great too. All the trolls propagandize it’s bloatware while it’s a simple clock that sends an alarm notification, but have like 15 extensions loaded in the background consuming tons of memory and interfering with the browser in every possible way. Please enjoy your stale browsers that have stayed in 1996 and keep your toxicity to yourself.
So you are one of the sort who call anyone who disagrees with you a troll or worse (bigot isn’t Monday’s word then?). I truly detest people like you. The only toxicity and intolerance comes from you lot.
@ GoPlayWithTraffic
Playing with the traffic !! That’s a bit dangerous. How many times a day are you hospitalised ??
> I truly detest people like you. The only toxicity and intolerance comes from you lot <
I think you are getting over excited. Take a tranquiliser and have a lie down in a dark room.
NB
I have been reading Martin's blog for several years. I do not recollect seeing your post name before. Have you changed your old name so that you can pretend to be mr / ms nasty instead of mr / ms nice.
I use whatever user name takes my fancy. Detest is too mild a word for what I feel about these sort of people unfortunately the internet has created a generation of them. You either agree with them or you are a bigot (funny as they are always by far the biggest ones), nazi…. But you don’t see their type on here too often, if that changes then I wouldn’t bother with the site anymore.
They have always liked to add random stuff, like the exif viewer for example, over sorting out core things or anything privacy related, only very recently have they done anything to do with privacy. Adding a clock seems the most pointless waste of resources so far.
Also to be picky that’s not a status bar, it’s a toolbar that happens to be where the status bar normally is as practically everything is for actions not status.
Great work Vivaldi! This can be a great feature for people who tend to use the computer for longer periods of time especially writers and developers.
I’ve been using a customized pomodoro for myself for a long time but I had to use a Windows app for that. Now that Vivaldi gives this feature after a few months, it’ll become a lot easier for setting alarms and managing work.
Some people like to search endlessly for the countless plug-ins out there for other browsers, or prefer to get some app to add certain functionality to their computers. To me, it’s so much better when these simple things are packaged into a larger piece of software. I don’t see how people can be upset about a free tool that can be hidden if you don’t use it.
In general, I think devs these days are much too eager to cut software down to the most minimal functionality and disallow customization – for ‘ease of use’ and ‘ease of maintenance’. Vivaldi’s seeming dedication to the opposite is what makes me so interested in them.
It could be useful, if it counts how long you are using a site and warns/blocks you after a specified time. Otherwise it’s rather pointless.
I don’t agree it’s useful and I don’t like it, because a web browser is a web browser and as such should be responsible for rendering websites. That’s all. Anything else is bloatware and should be an optional extension which users could install. This is my opinion.
Good job, Vivaldi team! I was lost in life and my existence had no purpose, but now that you added this very useful feature that only four people will use, everything arranges into place! I now know the meaning of life.
On a serious note… Are the developers retarded? Their browser has more pressing issues and they add a clock with alarm?! Mind blown.
Vivaldi clockworck, sounds good to me. Seriously, I will try Vivaldi once again. A couple of years ago it was quite slow on my old laptop. Curious to see if that will be better now..
@Sebas
Just wanted to let you know that this comment wasn’t written by me, but by a troll impersonating me:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/?unapproved=4456240&moderation-hash=07ce68bcbeca7769cea1cff360aae656#comment-4456222
It’s rather obvious that this idiot is trying to make persiflage out of my posts, please ignore him.
sorry, get better hardware.
I have a clock in the taskbar, on my arm and on my desk.
I hardly see a use for that feature.
Same with weather apps, btw. If I want to know how the weather is where I live I look out of the window.
Yea, lot’s of useful built-in stuff in Vivaldi. And very customizable if you don’t want it.
…Now, cue the usual people typing how much they hate Vivaldi and _________ browser and how Brave is great.
@Trey
Just wanted to let you know that this comment wasn’t written by me, but by a troll impersonating me:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/?unapproved=4456241&moderation-hash=7e57333fa625a882332090358e5e4b48#comment-4456211
It’s rather obvious that this idiot is trying to make persiflage out of my posts, please ignore him.
I like both! I don’t hate Vivaldi!
@Trey
I don’t think comparing Brave and Vivaldi makes much sense, since they target completely different audiences. Brave targets users who are interested in privacy protection, and potentially in the BAT ecosystem. Vivaldi targets users who are interested in customization options.
That being said, Vivaldi deserves some criticism for not being fully open source, which IMHO is just a no go for a web browser in 2020. Many of its competitors are open source.
@T J
I am the original Iron Heart, why else would I go out of my way to expose the impersonation? The troll obviously wouldn’t like the original Iron Heart appearing and adding a hint at the trolling right behind his posts.
I think the issue is not the lack of a moderator – as far as I understand, Martin Brinkmann has the privilege to moderate here. The problem is the lack of an account system, as @Klaas Vaak has correctly pointed out. If we had a real account system, nobody could register with a duplicate of the user name of another person, thus rendering such trolling attempts futile.
And to be clear, the original Iron Heart – me – is a Brave user, just not one that would advertise the browser to the point where it becomes silly hyperbole / a parody. Brave works best for me, it doesn’t mean that it has to be the best for others. I mean, here you can clearly see which is which:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456189
Someone is trying to make a laughing stock out of me, yet if that troll had some honor, he would use another nickname at least.
@TJ: before a moderator it is necessary to require people to register with a name that only they can use. At present anybody can use any name, incl. impersonations.
@ Iron Heart
You claim to be the real Iron Heart. The problem is the other posters do not know which is which. Are you really the original Iron Heart or the impersonator ??
NOW do you see why a Moderator is needed. He / She could check the submitting email source and delete the “fake” post. Of course a Moderator would interfere with your freedom of speech and you do not approve of censorship.
Oh dear, it looks like you will have to put up with the impersonation.
For the benefit of people to whom English is a second language:
“persiflage” = frivolous bantering talk
@Mele
Just wanted to let you know that this comment wasn’t written by me, but by a troll impersonating me:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/?unapproved=4456239&moderation-hash=1a74a1d0e77e8ab6776ad6b70cf46b12#comment-4456210
It’s rather obvious that this idiot is trying to make persiflage out of my posts, please ignore him.
@Klaas Vaak
Just a hint, there is someone impersonating me here. These comments weren’t published by me, among others the one you replied to:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456207
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456211
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456222
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456210
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456189
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456221
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456200
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456206
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456220
A troll is sadly busy misusing my nickname, posting Brave advertisements here. But I shall get rid of him and expose him in short order.
@Fake Iron Heart
Nice try, but my comments about Brave are just not silly hyperbole of that magnitude. Brave has its place in the browser world, and so does Vivaldi. They have different target audiences. The real Iron Heart, which is me, would never write something that stupid.
The only downside I can see with Brave is that it’s Chromium-based and hence advanced the Google/Blink monopoly. I wish Eich just forked Firefox back then.
@Iron Heart: what makes you suggest Cliqz might not be as good as Brave?
@Fake Iron Heart
Again, nice parody of my posts. It’s easily revealed to be a parody, though.
> I really feel that Vivaldi needs to up its game and follow Brave’s lead.
As I said in one of my real comments…
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/09/vivaldi-adds-a-clock-with-alarm-and-timer-to-browser/#comment-4456168
…Vivaldi and Brave have different goals and different target audiences, thus your statement makes no sense. You are just too dumb to impersonate me.
> I can’t speak for iOS as that’s outside my field of experience.
The real Iron Heart, which is me, is actually an Apple user all around. iOS browsers all have to use WebKit, they are basically just Safari reskins. You didn’t know that, proving again that you lack both the knowledge and the intelligence to impersonate me successfully.
> Brave is the thing I feel most authoritative about, so I’d prefer to stick to things I know about, and draw on my experiences about them.
Don’t know about you, but the real Iron Heart, which is me, is just a Brave user. I use it because it meets my needs best, and I usually don’t lean towards silly hyberbole.
@Fake Iron Heart
Your comment is just a Brave advertisement meant to be a parody of my posts. They lack the balanced view that I try to apply to my posts, your posts are just ridiculously over the top, like parody should be.
I’ve never said that the Brave browser is literally heaven on earth, lol. I said that it is the best browser for me(!) when web compatibility, ease of use, and privacy are considered. It is not perfect, and some browsers beat it in the privacy category, e.g. Ungoogled Chromium (that’s the name of the project, not “Ungoogled Chrome”, idiot – do your due diligence) . Firefox also isn’t “flawed” when it comes to the technical basis behind it, it just has bad privacy defaults, which Mozilla could change if the really wanted to.
Vivaldi’s UI also isn’t “pointless”, it serves a purpose, the purpose to make it customizable. The performance of it isn’t optimal, but them using it aligns well with the goals of the project.
The Brave browser is based on Chromium, and while it has additional features / benefits, you can hardly say the browser is entirely the engineering work of Brave Software Inc., that’s just ridiculous hyperbole @Fake Iron Heart.
Nice parody though, however it is easily revealed to be such.