Opera is Adding Bluesky, Discord, and Slack to Sidebar

Opera announced today that it will add Bluesky, Discord, and Slack to its web browser’s sidebar in response to community feedback. You can test these additions now in Opera Developer on Windows, Mac, and Linux. (And, yes, there is a native Windows 11 on Arm version.)

“The Opera sidebar is the access point for all the things that you consider important in your browser, and having access to your main messenger and social media apps just a click away is definitely useful,” Opera’s Santiago Benavides García writes in the announcement post. “After going over your feedback, we noticed that you wanted more messaging apps integrated in the sidebar, and that’s why we’re adding Discord, Slack, and Bluesky.”

The Opera sidebar sounds obvious enough, but I guess it’s been a while since I considered the point of having side-by-side functionality like this: It lets you minimize the amount of open tabs while still keeping up services that might send notifications or have other updates throughout the day. It also serves to push a web-first agenda, which I think makes sense for many people, by making Opera your “central hub” for the work you do on your PC.

“Think about it,” García adds. “Instead of having several apps open for music, working, gaming, and chatting, you’re just opening a sort of super app that is the Opera browser.”

Speaking of music, Office Developer also delivers a major update to the detachable music player in the browser by giving you the option to put it in the toolbar so you can easily control playback. And it delivers three new dynamic themes–Fjord, Metamorphic, and Interstellar–building on the previous two, Midsommar and Aurora.

You can download Opera Developer from the Opera website.