Vivaldi Refactored its Chromium Web Browser and You’re Never Going to Believe What Happened Next

Vivaldi announced today that it has refactored its Chromium-based web browser, unlocking huge performance and memory usage improvements.

“Over the years, some of you have reported that the opening of new windows was not fast enough. But not anymore,” Team Vivaldi writes in the announcement post. “Our new version on desktop–Vivaldi 6.2–is now faster, especially when you open a new window. By rendering browser windows through React portals, we’ve unlocked new possibilities, reduced memory usage, and significantly improved overall performance.”

Vivaldi’s codebase dates back to 2013, the firm says, and it uses the React JavaScript framework for its desktop browser user interface. To speed things up, Vivaldi recently created a new codebase for this UI called Portal Windows that provides more efficient sharing of running code between windows by reducing memory and CPU usage. It also provides just one script context for all windows used by the same profile (though Private windows still run in a separate context.)

Users will notice a big performance improvement, Vivaldi notes, especially when opening new windows. This will vary by PC, but the company’s internal tests show speed gains of 37 to 64 percent.

Additionally, Vivaldi 6.2 includes new features like address field suggestions (where you can the order of items in the drop-down menu, hide categories, and select category priorities), geolocation services (on macOS), a “Clear browser data” button in History, better discoverability for the Feed reader, and some Mail improvements.

You can download Vivaldi for Windows (or Mac or Linux) from the Vivaldi website.