If you’ve ever felt restricted by your current browser’s customization options, Vivaldi is the solution you’re looking for. It’s highly customizable and packed with a bunch of built-in tools that might easily become your favorite.

1Interface Customization in Vivaldi

Vivaldi was created with one primary goal: to give users extensive control over how their browsers look and feel. It’s built on Chromium, the same open-source browser used by Chrome and Edge. This means you won’t miss out on essential security features or sacrificing performance.

With that said, using Vivaldi, you could customize almost every aspect of your browsing experience, from icons and themes to toolbars and buttons, and attain a level of personalization far beyond what a browser extension could provide.

Customizable Toolbar

A toolbar is typically at the top of a browser and houses important components such as page reload and search bar. With Vivaldi, not only can you customize which tools are displayed, but you can also reposition the toolbar to the left, bottom, or right of the screen. This is particularly useful if you find the toolbar blocking your view of a website—moving it to the bottom, for example, can give you a cleaner, more immersive browsing experience. Moreover, you can even add built-in Vivaldi tools like the feed reader, screenshot tool, or calendar to your toolbar for quicker access.

Custom Icons and Themes

Vivaldi 7.0 (launched October 2024) introduced a revamped browser design featuring a cleaner, more minimalist appearance. But if that style isn’t to your liking, it’s not the end. There are several pre-made themes available to give a different appearance, and if you are in the mood to push customization further, you couldcreate a theme yourself inside Vivaldi and give it a complete makeover.

Also, have you ever wished to replace default icons in your browser with something of your own, such as the page reload icon with an Iron Man mask?

Vivaldi offers the flexibility to replace default icons with custom ones.

2Quick Commands and Mouse Gestures

If you’ve used a Mac, you’re likely familiar with its universal search feature, Spotlight. Vivaldi offers a similar experience with its own Spotlight-like search bar, which is dedicated entirely to the browser. By pressingCtrl/Cmd + E, you may open a Quick Command. For instance, if you want to access your browsing history, invoke Quick Command and type “history.” The page will open instantly—no mouse needed.

Additionally, you may use it to search the web, reopen recently closed tabs, or even look up specific settings within the browser. For example, if you wanted to customize your toolbar, you could simply type “toolbar,” and relevant settings would appear. I find this feature particularly useful because it eliminates the need to remember where certain settings are located and saves you from the hassle of navigating through menus.

Mouse Gestures

Mouse gestures are a great way to speed up and smooth down your browsing experience, especially if you own a laptop with multi-finger gesture support. Vivaldi offers the option to add your custom gestures. For example, you could create a gesture like a diagonal line from right to left with two fingers to close a tab or set up another gesture to open a new tab.

3Advanced Tab Management

Managing tabs can be a challenge, especially if you tend to keep multiple tabs open while browsing.Vivaldi makes this easier with its tab management features, allowing you to organize and navigate through your tabs efficiently. Here are some of the features that might help in keeping tabs under control:

To use these features, you just have to right-click on a tab, and the list will appear

4Web Panels and Dashboard

Web panels are tabs that open the mobile version of a website. It helps you keep your favorite websites accessible in the left sidebar of Vivaldi. The good thing about this feature is that it’s separated from your main tab, so they don’t get lost when you have 30 tabs open at a time.

I find web panels extremely useful, as my most-used websites are just a click away. For instance, I’ve created web panels for Gmail and WhatsApp, so whenever I need to check my email or WhatsApp, I simply click on the icon present in the left sidebar of the browser.

Additionally, with version 7.0, Vivaldi introduced the Dashboard feature—a central hub for all its built-in tools. Previously, there was no unified space to organize these tools, making accessing and managing them harder, but that’s no longer the case.

5Extensive Range of Built-In Tools

One of the aspects I like about Vivaldi is the extensive range of built-in tools it offers. Some of these are:

I particularly love that the notes I take in Vivaldi remain within the browser. This makes organizing and using them as a scratchpad easier, as I can even add screenshots and note things down.

The Reading List feature is another tool I frequently use, as I can use it to save articles and content for later. Additionally, the Feed Reader tool functions seamlessly. I can organize my feeds into folders, and catch up with content from my favorite sources.

Considering all these features and customization options, finding a single browser that offers such comprehensive functionality is nearly impossible. Additionally, even if I tried to replicate these features on another browser using extensions, their functionality would severely limit me, let alone the time spent collating all of these features.