Vivaldi 7.2 update brings faster address bar, priority shortcuts and more
Vivaldi browser has been updated to version 7.2. The new version brings a handful of improvements, notably for the address bar, keyboard shortcuts and Vivaldi Mail.
Vivaldi's address bar is faster and smarter
Vivaldi's address bar has undergone some tweaks, it now displays results faster than ever. More importantly, the address bar now suggests more relevant results based on your browsing history. This also applies to search suggestions, providing that you have enabled the feature in the settings, search is now faster with improved accuracy.
Combine that with the hotkey Ctrl + L, and you can find what you need in Vivaldi's address bar instantly. According to the official release notes, the overall speed of the browser, as in the page load speed, is also faster thanks to some optimized connection handling. Vivaldi was never too fast for me, it wasn't exactly slow either, but now it really does seem to load pages quickly, even YouTube videos started playing immediately. I have to admit, that's quite an improvement.
Customize Vivaldi's priority shortcuts
Sometimes websites may not respect a keyboard shortcut that you use? For example, the Alt + Left or Alt + Right arrow keys to go back or forward respectively, may not work on a webpage because the website doesn't support the function, or the website could be using the same combination for a different function. E.g. Ctrl + L or even Ctrl + F could do something completely different from what you are used to.
Try going to ChatGPT.com and press Ctrl + K, and you will see what I mean. Instead of shifting the focus to the browser's search box, the website uses the shortcut to focus the cursor on its chat field. That can be really annoying.
Well, not anymore, you can now define priority keyboard shortcuts to force Vivaldi to use a specific hotkey for an action. Head to the browser's Settings > Keyboards, and set your preferred options. What does it do? Vivaldi will prevent websites from using the priority keyboard actions for their own commands. This feature works across all desktop platforms.
Speaking of keyboard shortcuts, Workspaces now support Quick Commands, use the hotkey Ctrl + E to organize and manage your stuff.
RSS Reader without Mail and Calendar
One particular change that I really like is that Vivaldi now allows you to access its built-in RSS Feed Reader without setting up an account for Mail and Calendar. It's about time! Why on earth was that requirement in place? Anyway, to set up your feeds, go to the Settings > Mail > and select "Enable Feeds". Now, switch to the Feeds section and add the URLs that you want to subscribe to.
You can access the RSS Feeds from Vivaldi's side-panel.
Vivaldi 7.2 also introduces a new currency widget that you can use to check currency conversions in real-time on the dashboard. Vivaldi Mail has received some much-needed quality of life improvements, you can create an event directly from a mail or a web page, using the right-click menu. The event will be added to your calendar, without the need for further input. And, you can finally reorder your email accounts in Vivaldi Mail.
Download Vivaldi 7.2 from the official website for Windows, Linux, macOS.
Do you like these features?
New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits, Chinese food makes me sick…
And I think it’s fly when girls stop by for the summer, for the summer…
How long will it take to have the *name* of extensions in hidden extensions?
Proprietary nonsense. I’d never use it. Not even once.
Free + Open Source Software FOREVER. Not this stupid shit.
just changed from Opera to Vivaldi, glad to see lots of self decided feaure settings,BUT, the main problem to me is VIVALDI DOES NOT SAVE MY VIEWING SIZES PREFERENCES ON DIFFERENTS SITES.
CAN ANYBODY HELP??
TIA
Great features and customization options but the biggest issue still remains that its based off Chromium. Never touching another Chromium browser long as Google has its hands in it.
Their UI is still slow and last I checked, on Linux Mint XFCE 22 the close/minimize buttons don’t align to the topmost edge and corner of the screen so you have to precisely position the cursor one pixel below the edge of the screen to close the browser. While the tabs align properly and you don’t have to do that.
I repoerit in summer 2024, they said they know about it, but so far haven’t addressed it.
I think their UI is powerful and customizable, but slow.
They can’t do anything because their UI is made of web technologies, HTML CSS and JS, which means it will be slow… because they are not meant for being a UI for a browser and then run the webpages as iframes because the Browser’s UI is a big webpage.
This is why they can make ‘powerful and customizable’ changes compared to others like Edge and Brave that use Chromium native UI. Chromium UI is made of C++ so it is more expensive to modify but obviously you keep compatibility, like having tab groups for vertical tabs without implementing anything, and therefore auto tab groups extensions work with them.
So what can they do? they are not exactly the best company to develop a web browser. look at these features, are lame, while their native adblocker is still missing features, it is not the worst, and they added Scriptlet injection custom filters, but it is based on ABP, so they can’t do much either about that, it is limited by ABP, but ABP has some scriptlets that can do what Procedural Cosmetics do, so they could do some compatibility rules if they don’t want to support all ABP features, like remove, CSS, and procedurals… so they don’t work on the important things but they worry about ‘addres bar’ and some lame email integration that nobody cares about.
They also sell you the idea of ‘we care about privacy’ but they still connect to Google servers for components updates and safe browsing and all that, while other browsers like Edge and Brave have replaced Google with their servers.
Vivaldi will always stay at a low usage because their decisions and priorities, like when sync didn’t work for like 2 weeks and it just got ridiculous how they couldn’t fix something in less than a week.
I agree with you on that. The reason for Vivaldi to exist was because they sold Opera and wanted to make a new browser. Opera wasn’t popular because Presto was always playing catch up.
But Opera on Blink in 2013 was amazing, super fast and not bloated and it was my favorite browser for a few years. Vivaldi at launch was much slower and was promising, but it has been over 5 years and so far nothing is promising about it anymore.
As you said – the built-in content blocking is inferior to that of Brave. Even if I install custom filters, it still doesn’t block everything. Vivaldi needs uBlock Origin or AdGuard to be used properly. If those stop working, then Vivaldi has no legs to stand on.
All the customizability that Vivaldi offers means absolutely nothing to me. I’ve noticed one problem with how Vivaldi handles tabs – opening and closing tabs and what tab it goes back to. Literally every other browser, including Firefox, displays the exact same behavior, only Vivaldi behaves in a completely different way. It messes with my head because I’m used to the same tab handling behavior for years and only Vivaldi does it differently. They offer some options, but none of the combinations make it normal, like the rest, only make it more different and more weird.
On my Linux Mint PC, the buttons for closing are messed up and they can’t be arsed to fix it. Now they are doing what you explained very well – focusing on useless features nobody needs and pretend like their real problems don’t exist.
For this reason, I don’t care about Vivaldi, I don’t dislike it as I do with Firefox and Opera, but I have absolutely no reason to use it.