Vivaldi Launches Big Browser Updates on Desktop, iPad, and iPhone

Vivaldi launched major updates to its flagship web browsers on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, and iPhone this morning, bringing the version of each up to 6.5.

“Wrapping up 2023 on a high note, we gift you a string of features including the Sessions Panel, Synced Open Tabs, Full History Sync, Workspace Rules, and improved Notes in Vivaldi 6.5 on desktops and notebooks,” Vivaldi co-founder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner announced. “Vivaldi on [iPhone and iPad] gets Address and Tab Bars at the bottom or top, Custom Start Page Wallpapers, and full browser History Sync encrypted.”

Here’s what’s new on desktop:

Sessions panel. This new side panel can store tabs from a single window, all your windows, and optionally your Workspaces into a session, freeing up your PC’s memory and other resources. You can view, rename, and edit the contents of the saved sessions to selectively reopen some tabs in your current session.

Encrypted history sync. Vivaldi used to sync your typed history, searches, and addresses but it now syncs your complete browsing history across all your devices, and it uses end-to-end encryption. It also syncs Bookmarks, saved passwords, open tabs, Reading List, Notes, and settings. Vivaldi has no way to see the browser data you sync.

Synced tabs improvements. Synced tabs were previously available from the Tab bar, but they’re now available from the Address bar and Windows panel as well.

Tabs management improvements. Vivaldi’s Workspaces feature—which helps you organize your tabs logically based on topics and categories—now offers a new Rules feature that automates tabs organization so that tabs will move into the correct workspace as needed. “What if you accidentally opened a ‘work’ tab inside your ‘travel’ Workspace?” von Tetzchner writes. “Workspace Rules will clean up your tabs automatically by moving the tab into the correct Workspace for you. You no longer need to take the time to manually switch to the correct Workspace.”

Notes improvements. Vivaldi includes a Notes feature across all of its browser versions of desktop, mobile, and in cars, and it now offers a new option called “append to note” that will add selected text to the end of a note you previously created.

You can learn more and download Vivaldi for Windows, Mac, or Linux from the Vivaldi website.

Here’s what’s new on iPad and iPhone:

Configurable Address and Tab bars. Now, you can configure where the Vivaldi Address bar and Tab bar appear, at the top of the window or at the bottom.

Search improvements. In Vivaldi 6.5, you can optionally configure search results to appear in “reverse search suggestion order,” which puts the best results at the bottom of the screen where they are easier to reach by hand.

Start page customization improvements. The Vivaldi Start page is now more customizable with custom wallpapers.

Dynamic accent colors. Instead of using a single accent color, Vivaldi can now change the accent color on the fly to match the website you’re currently visiting. (This is how it works already on desktop.)

Full browser history sync. As with the desktop version of the browser, Vivaldi for iPhone and iPad now supports full browser history sync with end-to-end encryption.

You can learn more on the Vivaldi website. Vivaldi for iPhone and iPad is available from the Apple App Store.

Note: Those on Android don’t get a major update today, but Vivaldi has released a pre-release “Snapshot” update that includes several minor updates. You can download Vivaldi Snapshot from the Google Play Store. I assume a bigger update to stable is coming soon.