A browser with innovative features

While most people stick with the browser that was installed by default on their device, or they choose one provided by the big players, which are rather similar in appearance to each other. Other ones will want to surf the internet with a highly customizable browser. Vivaldi offers a multitude of innovative features, and with a bit of tweaking, you can maximize your online privacy as well.

Other browsers are removing features, we are adding them.

– Jon S. Von Tetzchner, CEO – Vivaldi

Chromium-based browser for power users

The Vivaldi customizable browser was created by a team of developers that left Opera. They aimed to build an interface that provides a substantial level of control for power users. It is based on Chromium, so most Chrome extensions are supported. Vivaldi functions on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. But due to Apple`s restrictions for browsers, it is not available for iOS as of yet.

A customizable browser that allows limitless tweaking

Almost every corner of the user interface is tweakable. This makes Vivaldi definitely stand out as a customizable browser. During installation, you can choose the colors, background, and layout of your choice, and you will be asked to select the location of the tab bar. A panel providing easy access to bookmarks, notes, downloads, and more is available on the left. You can change the position of the tab bar and all other panels instantly.

Link notes and screen captures to sites

A built-in notes function allows you to make text notes and link them to a specific site. Either click the Notes icon in the left panel or right-click a string of text and choose Copy to Note. You can also attach screenshots or files to them. This customizable browser comes with an integrated screen capture tool. You can find it at the right bottom of the screen. Vivaldi made it easy to capture an entire page from top to bottom with one click. But you can also capture a selection.

Organize your tabs in stacks

Tab management is available in many browsers nowadays. But Vivaldi goes a bit further than the competition. The Tabs Overview screen allows you to switch between open, private, synced, and recently closed tabs without an effort. To group tabs, you can create stacks. For people who work with many open tabs, the Two-Level Stacks Tabs feature is a big improvement in managing their open sites. In a stack, you can tile tabs; this means that you can view different sites simultaneously.

Syncing data and settings through end-to-end encryption

When you sign up for a Vivaldi account, you will be able to sync settings, bookmarks, history, and even open tabs between your devices. Syncing also spares you from customizing the huge amount of settings on another computer or phone. To respect your online privacy, the developers chose to sync your data via end-to-end encryption. While Vivaldi stores your information on their servers, they cannot read it, and no data gets sent to third parties.

Easily switch between search engines

Upon installation, Vivaldi sets Bing as the default search engine. It is their means of gathering revenue for their ongoing project development. This might not be to your liking, but you can change your search engine to whichever one you prefer. This customizable browser lets you switch between search engines by entering a letter followed by browsers in the address bar. So, for example, typing “s browsers” will bring you to the Startpage browser. Alternatively, you can set Presearch as your default search engine: this allows you to swap easily between many search engines.

Enable tracking protection to strengthen your online privacy

To further enhance your online privacy, Vivaldi has built-in tracking protection based upon DuckDuckGo`s Tracking Radar. 3 levels of third-party blocking are available: no blocking, block trackers, and block trackers and ads. It is important to notice that the ad blocker is not enabled by default, so you will need to activate this manually in the security settings. Moreover, it only blocks intrusive ads, so if you want to take your online date protection a step further, you still need to install an ad-blocking extension.

Predictive searching is disabled by default

While performing web searches, information is sent to a third-party server. This allows a search provider – whatever search engine you are using – to keep track of what you are looking for and which URL you have typed in.  Vivaldi gives you more control than other browsers to customize your searches. This predictive searching behavior is off by default, but you can eventually fine-tune this in the Search settings. Under the Privacy settings, you can block cookies as well. The choice is limited to either block them all or none.

A clear privacy policy

Vivaldi`s privacy policy is clear and understandable. Basically, they only collect information about which browser you are using, the CPU, your screen resolution, and a randomized ID. Together with your IP address but stripped from the last eight bits, this information gets sent to their servers every 24 hours.

Safer surfing with this customizable browser

With Vivaldi, you will get a highly customizable browser that still works fast. This review only pointed out the most significant features that you can fine-tune to your likings. There are numerous tweaks to set for power users. And the development team is constantly trying to improve their browser. Updates come out very frequently. On the privacy and security part, as long as you amend settings manually, you can surf the web more safely than by using the classic browsers.