Skip to main content

Want a new alternative browser? Vivaldi launches into public beta

Chrome alternative Vivaldi has announced it is entering beta after an eight month technical preview, which over two million people downloaded. The beta brings with it a ton of new features, expanding on Vivaldi’s promise of being the web browser of choice for the most demanding users.

Vivaldi wants to make it easy for users to customize their browser experience. Users are able to change where the address bar, tabs bar, and bookmarks are located. Tabs can be stacked into tab folders, and users are able to view a tab folder in tile view. Anytime you want to recover a deleted tab, just check the bin on the upper-right. The address bar changes color to match the webpages’ theme, and Vivaldi has added a sound icon to tabs making noise.

Command gestures are another new feature in the Vivaldi beta, letting users access browser functions with a written command or keyboard shortcut. Mouse shortcuts are also available through gestures, which users can set in the options menu.

Similar to Chrome, Vivaldi offers a list of your most important webpages in Speed Dial, but Vivaldi also allows you to customize the name and placement of the webpages. On the sidebar, Vivaldi has added a program for taking notes. Vivaldi Mail is still unavailable on the sidebar.

Vivaldi will be adding extensions onto the web browser, using the Chrome web store extensions. It is a Chromium-based browser, so it should be compatible with most of the extensions available for Chrome.

“Millions have downloaded our technical previews and many of them have given us the vital feedback we’ve needed to bring out this brand new beta,” said Vivaldi CEO and former Opera CEO Jon Von Tetzchner. “So this beta is our way of saying ‘thanks’. We’re one step closer to building the best browser for people just like us, who want and expect their browser to help them do more on the web.”

Vivaldi is a long way away from reaching the heights of Internet Explorer and Chrome, but passing the two million mark shows a good chunk of professional users are interested in a browser that can offer more than the old guard.

Editors' Recommendations

David Curry
Former Digital Trends Contributor
David has been writing about technology for several years, following the latest trends and covering the largest events. He is…
The new version of Opera made me want to ditch Chrome for good
The Opera One browser is now available as an early access developer preview.

The browser wars are heating up again, with Microsoft putting the focus on its new AI capabilities in Edge. But one of the underdogs out there, Opera, has released a brand new version of its browser that make it a serious competitor.

This is Opera One

Read more
Firefox just got a great new way to protect your privacy
Canva in Firefox on a MacBook.

If you’re fed up with signing up for new accounts online and then being perpetually spammed in the days and weeks after, Mozilla has an idea that could help. The company has just announced its Firefox Relay feature is being directly integrated into its Firefox web browser, and it could help guarantee your privacy without any extra hassle.

Firefox Relay works by letting you create email “masks” when you sign up for new accounts. Instead of entering your real credentials into the sign-up field, Firefox Relay provides you with a throwaway address and phone number to use. Any messages from the website -- such as purchase receipts -- are then forwarded to your real email address, with all the sender’s tracking information stripped out to protect your privacy.

Read more
Brave browser takes on ChatGPT, but not how you’d expect
brave browser

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage these days, and a bunch of Silicon Valley heavyweights are vying with OpenAI’s ChatGPT to shake up the tech landscape. Brave is the latest contender to take a swing, and the privacy-focused company has just announced its own AI-based tool for its web browser.

Called Summarizer, the new feature will seek to give you a quick answer to anything you ask it. It does this by taking information from a variety of sources and rolling them into a single coherent text block at the top of your search results.

Read more