Vivaldi home page screenshot with banner text, The only web browser powerful enough for you along with a large red button to download Vivaldi.

It’s been several years since I considered a different web browser. I’ve used Firefox and Mullvad as my main desktop browsers for a while.

Firefox Focus and Tor have been my mobile browsers of choice.

More than three years ago, I stopped using the Chrome browser.

But news about Mullvad as well as online conversations had me considering my browser choices. And taking a look at privacy-focused browsers.

First browser which came to my mind was Vivaldi.

I think my last time using Vivaldi was 10 years ago, spurred on by my friend, the late Molly Holzschlag, joining their team.

Quick Thoughts on Vivaldi

Today is a gray, rainy day in Michigan, so I decided what better day to check out a new browser?

I’ve only spent a couple hours using Vivaldi, customizing features, and reading through help files.

What I immediately liked was the minimal user interface. Which I could customize to hide features I found distracting.

Here are more quick thoughts.

Installation was fast. I downloaded the installer package, saved the file to my computer, opened it, agreed to their license agreement, and installed it.
After installation, Vivaldi opened quickly and greeted me with a welcome screen and a button that took me through customization steps
First up, and one of the most important features for me to set, was for tracking and blocking ads
Next step was an option to import bookmarks, passwords, history, etc. from my existing browser. I don’t save passwords in my browser, but importing my saved bookmarks was helpful.
I ignored the various colorful themes available and chose the Vivaldi theme. It’s basic, minimal, and doesn’t get in my way.
After setting tabs to display on top, I skipped over the settings for mail and calendar and finished configuring settings from their walkthrough

When I checked my browser bookmarks, I found a number of bookmarks Vivaldi added by default (resources, shopping, etc.). I deleted those from my setup.

Selecting Settings (gear icon in lower right of the screen), I customized my settings for search engine, privacy, security, downloads, and widgets on my Start page.

Talking about the Start page, I liked the Privacy widget statistics showing ads and trackers blocked as well as bandwidth saved.

Summary

Vivaldi offers a clean user interface, with dozens of customizable options. I was able to quickly add and hide features, navigate the interface, and configure the browser for my needs.

I still have more customizations to set and plan to explore the side panels more. Having quick access to Downloads from the side panel makes it easy to find that file I downloaded last week (but forgot about!)

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Quick Thoughts on Using Vivaldi Browser