Vivaldi

Vivaldi is building a browser that’s unabashedly geeky. It’s powerful, personal and freakishly flexible. A browser that adapts to you, not the other way around.

“The best browser on the web.” – WIRED

What did I do at Vivaldi?

I joined the company in 2016 as Growth Marketing Manager. At the start of 2021 I took on the Head of Product Marketing role to tackle branding, Positioning, user acquisition and activation. I wrapped up my time at Vivaldi in March 2022. During my five years in the company I worked at the intersection of product development, marketing, PR, and community, with a view of gaining growth in the millions of users globally.

What makes Vivaldi different?

More features, not less

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time in my browser. Shouldn’t it do everything you need it to out-of-the-box? Vivaldi thinks so.

Rather than passing the buck to third-party extensionsAs you would do in Chrome, for example, which can hurt performance, open you up to security issues, or leave you high and dry when the extension goes unsupported (as was the case recently with The Great Suspender). or other apps, Vivaldi comes with an insane amount of built-in functionality. There are the flagship, unique-to-Vivaldi features like Notes, Web Panels, Break Mode, Image Properties and (a lot) more. But there are is also a pile of functionality available to tweak; as well as multiple ways to control and interact with the browser (e.g. Mouse Gestures, fully customisable Keyboard Shortcuts, or Quick Commands).

A personal fave of mine at the moment is Two-Level Tab Stacks combined with Tab Tiling:

An escape from Big Tech

The long-game of Vivaldi is to create products that allow people to move away from the prying eyes of Big TechNamely: Google, Microsoft and Apple..

In June 2021, the browser launched an integrated translation tool to rival Google Translate, along with beta versions of an integrated mail client, calendar and feed reader. A major step down the road of providing an alternative, privacy-friendly productivity suite.Here’s a short explainer with more details on Vivaldi Mail, Calendar, Translate and Feeds.

Everything’s an option

Vivaldi’s aim is to work for anyone so it give you options. Lots and lots of options. You choose how Vivaldi works, what features to use and how it looks. It’s endlessly tweakable (in a good way).

There are no rules

How the browser works is up to you. There are multiple ways to access and control most things in Vivaldi. You can use Mouse Gestures, Keyboard Shortcuts or even a command-line interface to control the browserAwhile back I did a deep dive into Quick Commands. As with the Shortcut options I mention above, Quick Commands is a way to control nearly everything in the browser. This is a hallmark of Vivaldi – providing multiple ways to do everything.

“In many ways the Quick Commands menu is a universal search. It can search everything in Vivaldi – from open tabs to Bookmarks and History entries – as well as the web, using any installed search engine.” (all of which are fully customisable, of course).

When you first install Vivaldi, it gives you a choice of three default layouts. Why? To give you a head start on the core experience of the product: customisation.

This is where the magic happens. As you discover new features, mold the browser to adopt new habits yourself, you begin to see something pretty unique. A workflow and way of interacting with the software that’s bespoke to you.

“Like Emacs, everyone’s Vivaldi setup and experience may be different, and that’s the point.” – WIRED

Geeking-out is the way

Vivaldi is unabashedly geeky. We know it’s big and weird and complicated, but we do it on purpose. Vivaldi really is the antithesis of mainstream tech on this front.

“It’s not until you dig into Vivaldi’s settings that you discover its true power: The ability to tailor your browsing experience exactly the way you want it.” – WIRED

Press & Reviews

Visit Vivaldi Press Coverage for more

• WIRED - Vivaldi 5.0 Makes Web Browsing on Android Tablets Fun Again
• Forbes - Forget Google Chrome: Vivaldi Is The Browser To Keep Tabs On
• FastCompany - Too many browser tabs? Vivaldi’s new stacking feature is a game changer
• WIRED - 6 Reasons to Ditch Chrome for the Vivaldi Browser on Android
• Verge - What if you could see even more tabs?
• Android Police - Android Automotive gets its first browser and it’s not Chrome
• FastCompany - These clever ideas gave us hope for technology this year
• FastCompany - The little-known web browser that beats Chrome for productivity

Get Vivaldi

Download the desktop version for Windows, macOS and Linux on vivaldi.com or head to Google Play to get Vivaldi for Android.