Simpler profile management

In Vivaldi 2.4 we introduced support for User profiles. These allow multiple users to share one Vivaldi installation, without requiring you to log in to a different operating system user accounts, or maintain multiple, standalone installations. One early feature request was some easier way to change the avatar associated with your selected user profile. Many people also did not like the default set of avatars that we inherited from Chromium.

In Vivaldi 2.5 we started to use the avatar associated with your Vivaldi login to provide something more personal, that you could customise. However if you are not using sync with one (or more) of your profiles, you were still stuck with the default Chromium set and the experience for switching was a little messy.

So now we are giving you new options for non-synced profiles, and making it easier for you to select between them. You can switch between the new avatars or add and delete further profiles right from within the pop-out dialog.

Blocking ‘Abusive’ advertising

Nobody likes advertising but some can be downright dangerous. In Chromium 71, new functionality was added to block adverts from providers that use abusive technologies (designed to be misleading). This was not a feature we could simply turn on in Vivaldi because the blocklist was not provided to us via the same method that Chrome receives it. We have now done the necessary work to implement this in Vivaldi, with the blocklist fetched directly from our servers (though, the list itself is compiled by, and originates from Google).

The feature is enabled by default and can be turned off in the ‘Privacy’ section of settings.

Spoofing fixes

From time to time a website will decide to block Vivaldi users from accessing their pages or present a different (usually worse) version of their site. They can do this by looking at our ‘User Agent’. The User Agent is a piece of information that is sent from the browser to the website when it connects.

Sometimes the development team of a website will naïvely assume that only tested browsers should be given access to their site. Since Vivaldi is based on current web standards and uses an up to date copy of Chromium/Blink (one of the most popular rendering engines), there is usually no good reason to block us, but it happens nonetheless, with relative frequency.

To avoid such annoyances we present a fake (spoofed) User Agent on a handful of websites who have been unresponsive to our requests to stop blocking our users. In Vivaldi 2.5 a change in how networking connections work (inherited from Chromium) meant that this spoofing was no longer effective on some websites and thus our users encountered these problems once again. We have now fixed our built in spoofing, so that WhatsApp Web and Google.com should once again display as intended.

If you are having issues with other websites, where you suspect User Agent detection might be an issue, check out our guide on how to spoof effectively.

Razer Chroma headsets

In Vivaldi 2.5 we added support for Razer Chroma devices on Windows. This support did not extent to headsets. To be honest, we weren’t sure that anyone would care about the lights changing on your headset to match your tabs, given you can’t typically see the change when you have them on your head. Well… it turns out that some of you do! And who are we to judge? We make this browser for our users and if you want it, you can have it! So from today’s snapshot we have support for Razer Chroma headsets. Enjoy!

Download (1546.4)

Changelog

[New][Profiles] Add support for adding and deleting in the popup (VB-52800)

[New][Profiles] Allow editing of avatar within the popup (VB-51350)

[New][Panels] Add unread tab counter to the Window panel (VB-35467)

[New] Add support for blocking ‘abusive’ Ads (VB-46155)

[New][Razer Chroma] Add support for headset devices (VB-53039)

[New][Settings] Show favicon for active engine selected in search field (VB-2610)

[New] Update images for error pages (VB-52938)

[Regression] Google.com misalignes the input field after arriving via redirect: spoofing (VB-51893)

[Regression] Cannot use WhatsApp Web: spoofing (VB-52078)

[Bookmarks] Imported bookmarks lack folder name (VB-52691)

[Bookmarks] Internal page can not be added to bookmark folder from bookmark bar (VB-30881)

[Extensions] Developer tools crash browser on extension created tab or options page (VB-49764)

[Extensions] “Allow in Incognito” makes the extension icon appear at the end (VB-52550)

[Keyboard] Blacklist system reserved shortcuts (VB-51765)

[Keyboard] Esc can close both Find-in-Page and Quick Commands (VB-51886)

[Keyboard][Extensions] Shortcuts don’t work (VB-14668)

[Mac][Keyboard] ⌘N does not simply open a new window when all windows are minimized (VB-23789)

[Themes] Editor color picker misaligned (VB-52766)

[Sync][Speed Dial] Do not synchronize the columns and width (VB-52389)

[Sync] Occasional crash during syncing (VB-43254)

Twitter in a web panel crashes the browser and prevents restart (VB-53078)

Resize of tiled tabs is blocked if mouse moved too fast (VB-43950)

Clicks on modal dialogs can fail (VB-52859)

Minimize Pinned Tab option doesn’t work if Minimize Tabs is disabled (VB-52852)

Tab animation performance improvements (VB-52682)

Wrongly displayed decimal separator in the Downloads section of the left side panel (VB-32813)

Typed history dropdown in search field sometimes lacks keyboard focus (VB-52629)

Notification permission dialog does not overlap icon in address field (VB-25242)

Search bar suggestions are cropped in popup window (VB-52616)

Releasing middle mouse button on a tab closes it, even when the actual click was somewhere else (VB-43962)

Long touch both opens context menu and executes default action (VB-50393)

Updated translations

Main photo by Kotaro Maruyama