Vivaldi 7.1 Arrives on Desktop with Even More Personalization

Vivaldi today announced a major update to its desktop web browser that adds new Dashboard customization features, a weather widget, and a lot more.

“This release is all about making Vivaldi even better at adapting to you,” Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner writes in the announcement post. “From widgets that keep you informed to tools that simplify your workflow, Vivaldi 7.1 gives you more control, more customization, and more reasons to enjoy your browser.”

Here’s what’s new.

Weather widget. Vivaldi 7 added a new user experience that included a new dashboard with widget support. Now, 7.1 adds a new Weather widget you can add to the dashboard to get real-time updates from any location.

New widget capabilities. Dashboard widgets can now be customized with new background styles, and they can pull colors from your browser theme to be better integrated with the design.

Open tabs. This new feature pulls in the open tabs from rival web browsers so you can switch to Vivaldi more easily.

Speed dial improvements. Vivaldi’s Speed dial is like a personal launchpad for websites and web apps, a sort of bookmarks on steroids. In 7.1, you can now add sites and apps to Speed dial more easily via a new Speed dial dialog.

Simpler sharing. The new Send tab to device feature lets you instantly share a web page with Vivaldi on your other devices, including mobile. (This feature debuts January 30, so I assume we can expect an update to Vivaldi mobile by then.)

New default search engines. To keep Vivaldi free, the company is changing which search engine is configured as the default on new installs, and it’s working with partners like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant, and Startpage that can generate revenue for it. Vivaldi notes that it will never track, profile, or sell a user’s data. (I assume the new default choice varies by region.)

Stability improvements. In rare instances, Vivaldi could get stuck in a crash loop, making it difficult to recover from an error. That’s been fixed in 7.1, with a crash loop recovery feature most will never see. But good to have. And there are a ton of other fixes in there too, of course.

Vivaldi 7.1 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. And, yes, there is a native version for Windows 11 on Arm.