Latest Vivaldi Browser update adds more personalization options and new default search engines
The latest version of the Vivaldi web browser is now available. Vivaldi 7.1 adds several personalization options to the browser. It also makes some changes to the default search engines, downloads, and several other areas.
The new version is available already. While it will be downloaded and installed automatically on most systems, its installation can also be run manually. All you need to do for this is to open Vivaldi and select Menu > Help > Check for Updates.
Vivaldi 7.1 - the major changes
Vivaldi engineers have added several new personalization options to the browser. One of the new features extends the browser's new tab page. Widgets are part of the new dashboard that Vivaldi introduced in version 7.0 of the browser.
You may now add a weather widget to it. To do so, click on the add a widget button on the page and select weather. You may add any location in the world and get todays weather report and a weekly forecast directly whenever you open the page.
Also new here is the option to pick a custom background for each widget individually. You may select it to be transparent, semi-transparent, solid, or pick a custom color if you prefer that.
Speed dials continue to be supported and can still be displayed on their own or as a widget. Vivaldi says that it has improved the adding of new Speed Dials. A click on the new button displays options to enter a site name and title manually, use folders, or pick a site from frequently visited websites.
New Default search engines
Vivaldi says that it has changed some of the default search engines. In other words: the default search engine may have changed. On my test system, search changed from Bing to Startpage.
It is interesting to note that Vivaldi Technology lists the search engines that it has struck deals with. No Google or Bing on the list, but the following search engines only: Startpage, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, and Qwant.
To change the search engine, go to Menu > Settings > Search. There you find the option to pick the default regular search engine, private window search engine, and image search engine separately.
Other noteworthy changes in Vivaldi 7.1
Other than that, Vivaldi 7.1 makes a number of important under the hood changes. Here is an overview:
- On macOS, Delta updates are now supported, which should speed up the download and installation of new updates.
- New option to import open tabs from other browsers when switching to Vivaldi as part of the onboarding workflow.
- Instant sharing of open tabs to other devices with Vivaldi installed.
- Option to create unique file names automatically when downloading files in Vivaldi.
- Fixed a cause of crash loops.
You can check out the full changelog and more images of the new features on Vivaldi's official website. There you also find downloads, in case you want to give it a try.
Closing Words
Vivaldi continues along its unique path by adding more personalization options to its web browser. While that is not for everyone, it managed to carve out a niche for itself that appears to be thriving. All in all, Vivaldi 7.1 is a big release for the company, if you look at the large number of changes in the changelog.
Now it is your turn. Do you use Vivaldi, plan to use it, or have used it in the past? Feel free to leave a comment about the current state of the browser and what you like or do not like about it.
I’m surprised to see Vivaldi has a deal with Qwant which I use myself since it states on their landing page, “No selling of your personal data” and “Qwant does not retain your search data”. But dig a little deeper into the Privacy link and it states the following, quote:
“Only if you decide to create a User Account and consent through our cookie manager to Microsoft using cookies for advertising purposes, Microsoft will be able to exploit the advertising spaces on our Services. Microsoft will then auction these advertising spaces in real-time, allowing the highest bidders to access them.”
So Microsoft kind of gains entry via a backdoor.
I have never used Qwant. “Yes, a security researcher revealed this week that even DuckDuckGo, which markets itself as “the internet privacy company,” made an exception for its business partner Microsoft to its browser’s blocking of some advertising trackers on websites, sparking accusations of betraying its purported privacy ethos. See Wired, https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-microsoft-twitter-ft-bush-assassination-whatsapp/
No mention of PLATFORM.
Windows 7 ?
Always a pain to have to search for 1- Software history, 2- Software platforms … when it is the first thing which should appear on the software’s homepage. I don’t know about you all, but you’d be amazed of the number of applications I skipped just because I had no time to waist to find either of the two.
Had to dig to find : “On Windows, Vivaldi can be installed on Windows 10 and newer versions.”
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/install-update/install-the-vivaldi-browser/
They still keeps the Bing pic engine though. Keep both FF and Vivaldi.
Vivaldi have a lot of options to massage the browser into whatever works for various people with odd and common sense prefs.
My “thing” is to take advantage of the options in order to make the browser as simple, SAFE and PRIVATE as possible.
Not sure if I believe Vivaldi is that helpful in that context. Like with Firefox secure DNS is awkward, and I seriously want my browser to bleed dry of all sorts of info when putting it to rest. I want a clean resurrection every time I jumpstart the browser.
Sadly, Vivaldi have made the rinse and clean start cumbersome, and it is more than a tad annoying. If they don´t fix it, I´ll abandon them.
(Don´t fool yourselves, a clean browser don´t make anyone loose track of you. At all.)
who or what is ‘Agencies Ghacks’? And why is it posting articles on gHacks?
It’s good that they have removed the two tumors – Bing and Google, but they should add to the available list Baidu and Yandex. They are good if you want unfiltered and non-censored results.
Opera browser has better adblocking options by default than Vivaldi and Brave.
Opera’s default content blocker on desktop may be good, but on Android it’s so bad it’s almost useless.
Brave blocks several things which are very important:
– cookie dialogues
– on YouTube and Google, it hides the message when you visit the website for the first time – where you have to agree or refuse
– rogue pop ups on free movie/TV series websites
I’ve tried all browsers on Android and only Brave (and Kiwi before, but not anymore) are the best. Only brave offers background playback support. On YouTube, if you put a browser on the background or switch the tab, playback pauses. On Brave it doesn’t.
@Pletorus
Someone who says this clearly doesn’t know much about adblockers…
Seriously, it’s weird when people make claims like this when I am sure you and others haven’t even tested adblockers and their features.
1. Adblockers depend on two things, rules and syntax features, if one doesn’t work, the other will not do anything. Brave currently supports almost all uBlock syntax features and uses uBlock lists. We are talking advanced features like Scriptlet Injection that Opera doesn’t support.
2. Vivaldi is based on ABP, and it supports almost all ABP features, the only ones it misses are Procedural Cosmetic Filters, but it supports ABP resources (snippets/Scriptlets) and rewrite resources and all that, it doesn’t support the Remove or CSS inline rules either.
3. The problem with Vivaldi is ABP is limited, it works when it has the lists, but I doubt Vivaldi has the necessary lists to get rid of Youtube ads and all that, because ABP can deal with that and a bunch of things, in fact, a lot of ABP snippets can do what Procedural Cosmetics do, so if Vivaldi team wanted they would just workarounds the missing features with Snippet rules.
4. Brave on the other hands has the uBlock scriptlets support, which are amazingly great comapred to ABP, plus Brave has custom Scriptlets support in latest Nightly and it will arrive to Stable soonish enough, that way anyone on Desktop (no mobile support yet) can create scriptlets and add features that way, native JS is powerful, you don’t need userscripts or custom libraries like jQuery to make things great, so you can add content to websites without any trouble. uBlock MV2 is the only adblocker that allows for custom scriptlets to be loaded but not as easy as Brave nightly.
5. Opera doesn’t support anything like that, in fact, it chokes and few years ago when I tested it, it couldn’t even handle complex normal CSS selectors/pseudo classes. It would also do this weird thing when they add all cosmetics to pages, so when you save HTML you will get thousands of useless CSS rules that include porn and gambling websites that can get people in trouble especially when you have to email things.
They use ABP syntax I believe, but when I tested it didn’t support rewrite/redirect, snippets/scriptlets or anything.
So Opera is pretty much a basic adblocker with Network filtering and normal simple cosmetics, or this was the case a year ago when I tested it, I might have to re-test opera properly, but saying Opera is better at adblocking is such a BS statement when Vivaldi got a little better in the past year, and Brave keeps adding more parity features with uBlock, including Procedural Cosmetics, which don’t work as uBlock yet, still bugs, but Brave already has them, so improving them is what Brave has to do.
Stop making claims like this if you haven’t tested adblockers or don’t understand adblockers, you look bad, when a person who knows reads you. If Adblockers don’t have syntax support for specific features, doesn’t matter how many lists you add, it will always be bad, while Brave uses uBlock lists and resources and supports most rules.
The only thing Brave has by default is the Standard vs Aggressive adblocking mode by default, and Standard is not bad, it is just supposed to deal with 3p mostly, so it doens’t break too many sites, this logic is how 1p privacy can’t be achieved because you are giving your IP and all that when you connect to servers, so 3p is the only efficient way to block tracking, but switching modes takes 1 second and Brave will still support all the nice features.
Brave has custom rules, which Opera or Vivaldi don’t, custom scriptlets which Vivaldi or Opera don’t, Brave also offers Element picker on mobile and desktop, which I don’t even use but for simple hiding of a DOM element, it is enough for people who don’t know how to do it.
The power of Brave and Scriptlets that inject JS in a page, let people easily use FFZ, BTTV, SponsorBlock, ReturnDislikeButton, and just about any JS you find even in userscripts pages without the need of extensions, this means mobile can have SponsorBlock or ReturnDislikeButton and twitch adblocking and all, without needing extensions or apps. Vivaldi could do that but they won’t do it, they will stick to basic ABP 1:1 sadly, where ABP doesn’t allow custom scriptlets either, and Opera, yeah… it sucks completely because Opera is even worst than Vivaldi, of course, I must re-tests Opera, just as Vivaldi improved a little, maybe Opera did too! we never know until properly tested.
I used Opera when they charged for it, but there is no way I will use Opera these days. I simply don´t trust them at all.