Vivaldi update brings Session Panel, full History sync and more
Vivaldi Technologies has just released a new major version of the Vivaldi web browser for desktop and notebook operating systems. The latest major update of 2023 is packed with new features that improve usability across the board.
Existing installations should receive the update automatically, starting at 9:00 CET on December 14th, 2023. Users interested in getting the update as early as possible may run a manual check for updates to get it. This is done by selecting Vivaldi Menu > Help > Check for updates.
Vivaldi 6.5
One of Vivaldi's new feature is the Sessions Panel. It allows users to load and save open tabs or workspaces. Sessions may contain tabs from a single window, all windows and even Vivaldi Workspaces.
One of the ideas behind the feature is to improve manageability in the browser. You could open Vivaldi, research Christmas presents, then save the session to go back to it later.
You may then close the window to free up memory and do some other work using Vivaldi. When you want to go back, you select the Sessions icon in Vivaldi's left sidebar and double-click on the session that you want to restore.
A simple process. You may also map keyboard shortcuts to main sessions related actions to speed up things further. Open tabs that do get saved as sessions are not closed automatically though.
Vivaldi Sync improvements
Vivaldi engineers have improved synchronization significantly in the new release. First, by enabling full browsing history syncing across all devices that Vivaldi runs on.
Vivaldi synced some data only, including the typed history and searches. This was useful, but it did not sync all sites that you visited on a specific device. Now, Vivaldi is syncing the entire browsing history to make sure that you have access to it on all your devices.
Another synchronization related feature adds access to synced tabs from all devices from the address field directly. Synced open tabs may now be returned when you type in the browser's address field.
Vivaldi gives you full control over the priority of address bar results. The change was introduced in Vivaldi 6.4. It allows users to change the priority of items that Vivaldi returns when they type in the address field.
You can, for instance, move bookmarks all the way to the top to give them the highest priority. Or, you could push your browsing history or synced tabs to the top instead, or reduce the priority of search suggestions.
Workspaces automation
Workspaces is a useful feature of Vivaldi to separate different tasks from each other. Like Sessions, Workspaces allow users to focus on specific tasks at hand. You could create a workspace dedicated to Christmas Shopping, another for entertainment, and a third for school or work.
Vivaldi 6.5 introduces automation to Workspaces. This feature is designed to help avoid opening tabs in a Workspace in which they don't belong.
These rules match URLs to certain workspaces. You could match URLs of shopping sites to the shopping Workspace, or ghacks.net to your favorite workspace.
New rules can be set up under Settings > Tabs > Workspaces in Vivaldi.
Notes improvement
Vivaldi's note taking feature allows you to add notes to the browser. This can be text that you type manually, or text that you select on websites.
The feature was limited to creating new notes. The latest version of Vivaldi adds an option to add text to existing notes. This can be useful if you want multiple pieces of content that you found on one or multiple sites to a single note.
Closing Words
Vivaldi 6.5 improves the desktop web browser significantly. It enables full browsing history syncing, a much requested feature, the ability to automate the use of Workspaces, and improves sync and notes as well.
It is always surprising how customizable Vivaldi is when you visit the browser's Settings. There is so much to explore and tinker with to make this browser a customized powerhouse.
Now You: do you use Vivaldi?
@4456457
This is what happens when you don’t do things with Native Chromium UI, and instead you implement the UI with not only a non-native UI, but one built with Web technologies, you know, HTML, JS, CSS.
It is so easy to break Vivaldi when using all the ‘cool’ features together. But people can’t say you are telling a lie when moving tabs from window to window is really a pain.
Also, they don’t offer much, besides their custom UI, so they will keep adding features even if they will never work great.
Even if people complain about Edge and Microsoft, Edge team has matches almsot all Vivaldi features by using native Chromium UI, which means it is fast and good, but also extensions like auto-grouping extensions will just work.
Brave even supports the save and sync tab groups with no effort as well, because Brave also uses native UI.
Of course modifying Chromium native UI requires C++ devs = more expensive than web devs, but when devs can do anything with native Chromium UI, although it takes longer to implement, shows how having a custom UI like Vivaldi is a mistake, because while it gives flexibility, it makes things bad, even if fanboys will be in denial and don’t admit it.
@Anonymous,
I think so as well, Vivaldi is a dud, a failure. I was excited about it around 2015, but since then it hasn’t improved at all. It’s even more bloated now. And they still haven’t fixed tab behavior after 8-9 years of existence.
Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Brave and every other browser has the same tab behavior on how tabs are opened, closed, where the new opened tab is placed, when you close a tab, which tab is on focus next and so forth.
Only Vivaldi can’t do this right and the tools they provide you to customize this don’t allow you to achieve parity behavior with EVERY OTHER BROWSER.
What’s worse is what you are saying – Vivaldi breaks so easy because of how flimsily it was built and they are the last major Chromium project, which updates to the latest version of Stable Chromium. They were running Chromium 119 until 5 days ago (14 December) when Chromium 120 released to Stable on 5 December.
Sometimes I’ve seen them lagging behind the Stable release for MONTHS.
I would have been OK with Vivaldi if it released a clean Chrome where they just put their own spin on the UI shapes and margins while retaining the Vanilla UI. And then host their own Extensions Store and develop their own extensions that do all the things they are currently bloating the browser with.
The only thing I admire Vivaldi (and Brave for that matter) is that they have a built-in ad-block and pop-up block, something that gives them a major advantage over everybody else. I’m not sure about Vivaldi’s built-in content blocker, though, because I’ve recently tried it on Android and it sucks monkey balls. It doesn’t block nearly half the ads, websites that have rogue pop ups get opened as if I have no protection, cookie dialogues are also displayed. And adding custom filters is so annoying that I’d better give up. On the other hand, I use Brave as my default browser on Android (and PC) and on Android it blocks everything without me even changing any settings. On PC I still use it with uBlock Origin, because I’m curious to see what will happen when that Manifest V3 thing happens.
why we need ‘just another chrome’?
@epstein,
Vivaldi is just another Chrome, no matter how you look at it. Whether all the features it has a built-in or provided as optional extensions, it doesn’t change anything. All the Firefox forks don’t do anything with their UI either, they just advertise “privacy” as their main goal and that’s the end of the story.
Firefox has put much effort to limit its customization as much possible so it resembles Chrome even more. At this point Firefox doesn’t offer anything different from Chrome, I’m not talking about “good or bad”, I’m talking about “anything different”, and it doesn’t.
If Firefox dies in the near future – usage share drops so low it becomes meaningless to maintain it and it gets abandoned or they switch Firefox to Chromium, it won’t matter at all, because nothing will change.
Chrome was always THIS limited, but Firefox spent years TRYING to become THIS limited (as Chrome). So the eventual death of Firefox won’t mean anything to anyone. I lament the death of Firefox 3.6 only – the last good version of Firefox – the browser has been garbage since then, mostly on a crusade to copy Chrome down to the last pixel and line of code.
The main reason I use Vivaldi over Firefox is that it ships all the features I need out of the box, while basically every new Firefox update breaks most of my extensions (I use ported ones from XUL, like VimFx)
Vivaldi for Android is one of my “back-up browsers” on my mobile. It’s already a bit more browser than I need, “bloated” as mentioned above, but I’m not complaining, yet……..
I still prefer Mull and Cromite, truth be told….
Another great new release. It might be useful to launch two different editions. One that focuses on all features which should also not be inferior to the other in terms of security. The second version should be more basic and top notch in terms of security.
How free and independent are browsers based on Google Chrome ?
More bloated than ever before. I was excited about this POS trash around 2015-2017 when I first heard about it. Since then I switched 2 PCs, each more powerful and that POS still runs like a sphincter.
All this bloat should be standalone extensions on their extensions store that people can optionally download if they want to. The default UI should be that of Chrome with less rounded corners and smaller margins.
I think Vivaldi has even less users than Opera which also became trash in version 100 and they are banning people complaining and deleting their posts on the Opera forums.
What are you complaining about? Having a billion features is their actual USP.
>The default UI should be that of Chrome…
Chrome exists for that, and other chrome based browsers with less features exists for people that want a browser without features.
Vivaldi is the only browser that centers on features, removing them will just make it identical to the rest of chrome like browsers out there and I think we have enough of those.
Great new release. I had to go searching to figure out what automatic session backup was. That should be added to this article.