Vivaldi 5.0 launches with major tab improvements on Android, translate panel on desktop

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 2, 2021
Updated • Dec 2, 2021
Vivaldi
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Vivaldi 5.0 for all supported desktop operating systems and Google Android has been released on Thursday 2, 2021. The new version of the Vivaldi web browser marks an important milestone for the company.

The new version is already available. Desktop and Android users should receive it automatically through the built-in automatic updating functionality.

Desktop users may select Vivaldi Menu > Help > Check for Updates to display the installed version and run a manual check for updates. The new version should be found and downloaded & installed at that point.

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android improves tab management in the Vivaldi browser significantly. The mobile browser supported a tab bar on Android already, similarly to how tab bars work on desktop browsers.

With Vivaldi 5.0 comes support for two-level tab stacks. The feature adds a second tab bar on the user's request to the selected tab.

Here is how you enable it:

  1. Long-tap on the "new tab" icon in the Vivaldi for Android interface. A selection menu is displayed.
  2. Select "Create new tab stack" from the context menu.

The Tab Stack is added to the active tab. All other tabs that are open remain single-level tabs. Another option to open a tab stack in the mobile version of Vivaldi is to do so from the Tab Switcher. Vivaldi explains how that works in the following sentence:

While looking at the tab thumbnails, simply drag one tab on top of another to create a new stack.

Vivaldi published a video on YouTube that demonstrates the feature:

The new Vivaldi version for Android introduces two additional tab-related improvements. The close button is only displayed on the active tab by default. Vivaldi users may restore the close button on all tabs in the Settings.

Users who have lots of tabs open in the browser may benefit from a new display option that displays just the favicon of sites in tabs. This makes room for lots of tabs in the visual area of the tab bar, and works well with the new two-level tab stacking feature of Vivaldi for Android.

Vivaldi calculates the width of tabs in the browser dynamically starting with this release. The feature works identically to how desktop browsers change the size of tabs based on the number of open tabs in the browser and the width of the browser window.

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android can shrink tabs up to the favicon if lots of tabs are opened, but will keep the title displayed if only one or a few tabs are open.

Vivaldi users who prefer dark mode for sites can enable the option under Vivaldi Menu > Settings > Theme > Dark mode for Web Pages.

Websites are displayed in dark mode from that moment on, but there is an override in the main menu to disable it for certain sites; this is useful if the site does not display correctly when the mode is enabled.

Another new feature is the option to append text to notes in Vivaldi for Android.

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android tablets and Chromebooks has seen optimizations to take better advantage of the bigger screens that these devices have.

Larger Android devices get access to panels in the new release, which work similarly to how panels on the desktop work. Panels can be toggled on and off, and provide access to features such as the bookmarks, notes or downloads.

Vivaldi 5.0 for the desktop

The desktop version of Vivaldi has seen improvements in two main areas in this update: themes and translation.

Themes can now be created and shared using Vivaldi; the feature opens up new options, including downloading themes from the new themes repository on Vivaldi's website.

To get started, select Vivaldi Menu > Tools > Settings > Themes. Switch to the Editor on the page to edit theme colors, settings and background images. The new export option is found on the page as well. Themes are exported as zip archives and they can be imported at any time using the new import option.

The browser's translate feature, powered by a self-hosted instance of Lingvanex, has seen improvements in Vivaldi 5.0 as well. The new Translate Panel enables users to translate snippets of text in the browser. While you could translate selected texts before in Vivaldi, it is becoming easier with the new Translate Panel.

Select the Translate icon from the browser's sidebar to get started. You may need to activate the sidebar with a click on the leftmost icon in the lower toolbar of the browser.

The Translate panel accepts copy and paste input, but it may also be set up to translate text selections automatically. Check the "auto-translate selected text" option from the panel for that.

Vivaldi includes a translate history page to look up previous translations in the browser.

Translations should also be faster according to Vivaldi:

It is challenging to integrate a translation feature in a browser and make everything work quickly under a high load. So, a lot of work has been put in to reach this ambitious goal. With significant development and rigorous testing before the launch, the speed improvements will help provide you with faster translations.

Downloads in Vivaldi may be displayed in a popup instead of in the panel. The option needs to be turned on under Vivaldi Menu > Tools > Settings > Downloads > Display Downloads in a Popup.

Check out the official Vivaldi website for more information and download links.

Now You: Do you like the new release? Anything that could be better or improved?

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Vivaldi 5.0 launches with major tab improvements on Android, translate panel on desktop
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Vivaldi 5.0 for all supported desktop operating systems and Google Android has been released on Thursday 2, 2021. The new version of the Vivaldi web browser marks an important milestone for the company.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Dumbledalf said on December 4, 2021 at 1:53 pm
    Reply

    I’ve been probably asking for 5-6 years for a downloads pop-up and they add it now. I’ve been asking for an easier way to add content blocker rules to the browser since around this summer, probably another 5-6 years until that makes it into the browser.

    That is especially important for mobile Vivaldi, because the browser, unlike Kiwi, doesn’t support installing extensions yet.

    1. MW said on December 5, 2021 at 2:18 am
      Reply

      Do you mean element picking or adding additional filter lists? I believe the latter has been available on both desktop and mobile since shortly after the content blocker launched. As for the former, I agree that it is desperately needed, but the Devs seem uninterested in adding it (yet) much to my chagrin.

  2. martin prior said on December 4, 2021 at 6:24 am
    Reply

    I have been using Vivaldi for many years. I moved from Opera. It is my favorite browser and I prefer it to all the others (for my purpose). I have found it to be extremely stable and has numerous features like mail which I really appreciate.

  3. Jody Thornton said on December 3, 2021 at 3:00 am
    Reply

    Tabs under the address bar yet? At all? Hello?
    I don’t think there is working CSS code that does this.

    1. Anonymous said on December 4, 2021 at 1:13 am
      Reply

      I asked on the forum and they said they won’t support it because the Chromium base does not support moving the tab to below. People are doing css hacks for this(look at the other comment), but be careful they are really buggy.

      1. Jody Thornton said on December 4, 2021 at 9:55 pm
        Reply

        I know. I’ve seen dozens of these hacks that break every time you upgrade.

        First off, if it’s achievable through CSS, why can’t they implement it in thieir UI? Most of it is NOT in the Chromium base.

        Secondly, they offer EVERY OTHER conceivable modification tho the UI, but NOT tabs below the address bar? I have a hard time believing that.

      2. MW said on December 5, 2021 at 4:15 pm
        Reply

        I wish even smaller, simpler items would be more customizable. I’m not sure why you cannot “hide” the discarded tabs icon (trash can) or the content blocker icon (address bar) in Vivaldi. Sure, you can resort to some hacky CSS modifications, but if you sell yourself as “the customizable browser” and then don’t allow users to turn off pretty basic items in the interface, I’m not sure what you are doing.

    2. k bye said on December 3, 2021 at 3:43 am
      Reply

      not sure since i didnt use it but this seems from this year – https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/56809/tabs-below-address-bar-and-bookmark-bar

  4. chicken stew said on December 3, 2021 at 12:30 am
    Reply

    Proprietary. I’ll pass.

  5. Honorius said on December 2, 2021 at 2:19 pm
    Reply

    > Now You: Do you like the new release? Anything that could be better or improved?

    Many things can be improved, but the fact that the customizability of the browser is increasing from version to version (rather than decreasing) and that features are added that are useful to users, not just the creators of the browser themselves, is good.

    1. Tom Jerry said on December 2, 2021 at 4:37 pm
      Reply

      @Honorius

      So you care more about customizability, than actually a good browser? Vivaldi “customization” is the reason Vivaldi is the slowest, more resouce intenstive Chromium browser. You can’t even open 2 youtube videos without feeling the browser taking the hit. You might think that is good because “better tab management” but what is the point of many tabs if each tab you open will slow more and more the browser compared to other Chromium browsers?
      The whole UI is just dumb, since they were the lazy team building it on Html5+Css+JS… I mean, why didn’t they use a proper technology to build their closed source UI? The browser is literally running inside Vivaldi browser like in an iframe…. do you think that is a good thing? or do you expect it to be fast like any other chromium browser that uses native UI (but still give users some customization like Edge)?

      Privacy, they do nothing to stop Google from tracking you and getting all your data, yeah Vivaldi says they don’t keep your information but never did anything to stop Google from getting it.

      So they obviously don’t care about your data, they don’t care about information since they started asking phone number confirmation to enable the mail service with the Vivaldi account, they don’t care about performance since their UI will always be slower than anything else (websites are slower and use more resources thanks to html5+ccs3+JS… what do you expect when you use it as UI because they are mediocre and lazy?)

      “not just the creators of the browser” What do you even mean by that? They are not independent, they are getting money for running this mediocre browser, if not the CEO wouldn’t be traveling around, last I heard he invaded…. I mean, “resides near Boston, MA.” while still voicing his opinion about subjects that don’t concern him about USA and supporting criminal organizations like BLM, while the Browser’s twitter was retweeting it because “our CEO said”, so he and the company couldn’t even just stay quiet or be a little smarter and stop doing what other companies like Google or Microsoft or Apple and other silicon valley or big tech or any big organization that expected to gain money from it would do, especially when it is not even subjects about their countries, becuase at least G, Mic and Apple are USA companies technically.

      I wouldn’t think it is not an agenda to mention all the time how their servers run with “clean energies” which is the same lie told to everyone else by governments and organizations for money. Those energies are not clean and are not green and are not environement friendly, I mean, the technology they are supporting by having a browser is incompatible with anything environmental, technology pollutes, technology needs tons of energy to run, the supposedly green energies are a lie and actually affect the environment more than you think.

      Tetzchner, couldn’t even be serious in 2005 about going from Norway to USA swimming of Opera Browser got 1million downloads, it was one of those cheap attempts to get some quick downloads to see if he even did it, and he didn’t even try to do it and do what he said he would do.

      But seriously do you think that guy is not getting anything? seriously? You gotta be too naive if you think so. The browser customization in that awful UI implementation is the reason people use them because no other Chromium has it, so that way some people will use them because of customization but they don’t do much about anything else, their search deals and other deals will stay relevant and they will not change much since they will keep milking the apparently easy to fork Chromium, becuase it is not like they built their own engine or anything, and they will keep their UI close source and slow, and they will keep talking about privacy while still not doing anything about Google getting your information, features like adblocker and others will never be decent and you will have to relay on Adguard or uBlock or ABP or whatever, and still that will not be enough because Chromium can’t do cname filtering, so websites and companies will find 900 ways to track you and Vivaldi won’t do anything about it like many other companies.

      I mean, you can like them if you want, but don’t pretend and lie to yourself they are these nice people building a browser for free while not getting anything bcack to themselves. Maybe not directly with their features but they are releasing these fancy and still useless features, while not doing much about anything else.
      If you think tab managment in Vivaldi Android is the way it should be… oh well, it seems you don’t use your phone too much to browse the internet, so they couldn’t even bother doing it properly and tried to give desktop features to mobile features and people are falling for the “oh many features in this release” scam many technology companies do.

      “Useful to users”… how many do you think will get benefit from the awful android tab management? or their slower Chromium fork? I bet 10 users will use most features released by Vivaldi team anyway and it sounds you are a blind slave… I mean user of their browser and the technology world where more features are better than bugfixes and unlazy development.

      1. Honorius said on December 3, 2021 at 12:21 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Jerry
        Somebody hurry up and call the fire department – there’s a man’s lower back on fire!

      2. Klaas Vaak said on December 2, 2021 at 7:48 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Jerry: if Honorius is happy with Vivaldi, even if for the wrong reason, why do you feel the need to change his mind in an offending, denigrating way? Do you really think he will change his mind on the basis of what you wrote and how you wrote it? You are kidding yourself.

      3. calm down wouldnt ya said on December 2, 2021 at 5:02 pm
        Reply

        lol…functionality is what vivaldi user want, thats what makes it good, function is what make me choose to use the slow, “bad”(according to your comment) browser like firefox(prequantum update) back when its actually offer those rather than using chrome you know, not so much nowaday apparently.

  6. MW said on December 2, 2021 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Solid update, but I wish addressing long-standing bugs would be a bigger priority for the company. I get they feel they need to add more features in an attempt to attract users, but some of those users that may check out the browser due to a feature, may leave just as quick due to the bugs. And it’s not like they are bugs that are niche, clicking the home button while on a website in Vivaldi take you back to the speed dial, but rather than the address bar being highlighted (like in every other major browser), the search bar on the speed dial is highlighted or (if that is hidden) the first bookmark/speed dial icon.

    Don’t get me started on how they have allowed the ad/tracker blocker to languish with no noticeable improvements since launch. That alone is damning as the day uBlock Origin stops working on Chromium-based browsers draws nearer by the month.

    I really want to like Vivaldi. The team behind the browser seems dedicated to “doing the right thing” in the browser space (at least in comparison to some of the other major players), but it’s hard to recommend Vivaldi to casual users when it is by far the least stable of the all the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Safari, Opera, etc.).

    1. web said on December 3, 2021 at 5:34 am
      Reply

      this is me, i update every major version since the first ones, to see if extension’s keyboard shortcuts are working..
      not fixed yet.

      1. Honorius said on December 3, 2021 at 12:12 pm
        Reply

        @web
        Well, if you still have not figured out to go to the settings and change the corresponding option, then you’ll have to wait a long time to fix the “bug”.

    2. average user said on December 2, 2021 at 3:02 pm
      Reply

      never had any of those bug…been using since 4.6, maybe your settings?
      set your home button to a specific url in settings > general > startup > homepage.
      as for searchbar focus, settings > tabs > tabs (tabs handling) > untick focus page content on new tab.

      as for adblock, i cant comment since i use adguard.

      i only experience bookmark bug so far which is fixed in this version, yeah it the least stable (for now maybe) but i want every features it offer, firefox definitely a no go for me anymore since they keep butchering it every new release (ui, customizability, function, etc).

    3. Honorius said on December 2, 2021 at 2:44 pm
      Reply

      > clicking the home button while on a website in Vivaldi take you back to the speed dial, but rather than the address bar being highlighted (like in every other major browser), the search bar on the speed dial is highlighted

      What makes you think it’s a bug? It looks like intended behavior.

  7. average user said on December 2, 2021 at 10:10 am
    Reply

    nice nice nice, thumbs up

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