Vivaldi is so close to being good, but...
A) Chromium
B) Proprietary
C) Chromium
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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So far ublock is working flawlessly. I'll find an alternative when it doesn't.
Adblock Plus is the best alternative, but generally the inbuild adblocker also work fine, except is discovered in YT, for this is enough with uBO lite and the Vivaldi trackerblocker.
No AI, but it's still a chromium reskin.
Not a simple reskin, it's a Blink browser of it's own, and European. Currently the most advanced browser out there.
Don't bother. Every time a Vivaldi post shows up, the top 10 comments is about not being absolutely perfect to the practically impossible to please sensitivities of some people who cannot grasp the concept of compromise and see the big picture that supporting a company like Vivaldi is a good thing helping get to that browser utopia we all want.
There are more reasonable people reading and not commenting
Why does it matter that it’s chromium? And why do you think it matters less in this case?
I think that some people don't like Chromium, because it was made by Google, or better Google forked it from the German KHTML engine by KDE. Chromium is 100% FOSS and everybody can modify it to the like, gutting the Google Spy APIs, which is done by eg. degoogled Chromium and also Vivaldi. Because this it matters less that it is an Chromium, not sponsored by Google, like Mozilla with breathing Alphabet INC in your neck, nor by anyone else, there are no third party sponsors supporting Vivaldi. Blink (Chromium) is the best engine for current webformats, because it's the most used and because of this most webs are optimized for it.
So the fact that it is based on chromium does nothing to help Google? And doesn’t give them any more power?
Only if you use Chromium as such, but not if you use an fork without Googles tracking APIs. You give Google power using his services, Google search, his AIs or makes a contract with his support. but not using an modified FOSS browserengine. Do you think that EDGE helps Google?
Yes... Very much so.
Why do you think it's so well supported by web standards? Because Google can *make * the web standards when everyone uses their engine. And they don't do it for good.
So yes, every chrome variant does help Google.
Not really, it's use and fork an FOSS, the webstandard is a response of the most used system to access it, which is Chromium (Blink), it really benefits only the webmasters because this standard. Both other engines only can try to emulate this differences. The real problem is that since more than 20 years there isn't any new engine apart Blink, Gecko and WebKit + some few exotic forks of these (Goanna, Qt...), not really usefull for modern Browsers. The engine is by far the most complex part of an browser and to develope a new engine is a work for a lot of devs for years. There are some attempts (eg. Ladybird) where we maybe can see an stable release in two - three years, if they don't abandon it before like some others.
Even the maintance of the engine is a lot of work, not really affordable for single devs, needed to permanently check for security holes which permanently ocurres due new malware in the network (thousends every day, specially now in the current world situation) and release corresponding patches. Vivaldi is always 2 Chromium versions behind (except security patches), because the need to gut the Chromium engine and modify it for 6 different OS (Windows, Linux, Mac, Androud, Android Auto, iOS) before the new release. Hard work for this small cooperative in Norway.
A small part of Vivaldi, related to the UI, is proprietary, source available, not closed source. So Chrome and EDGE can't use it legally. Gecko browser have it easier to release as FOSS, there are no big corporations which use it.
Quite aware of all that and you conveniently sidestepped the issue with Google doing the bulk of that work and dictating the future of the web. It's the new ie6 which was never a good thing.
If you can't see that then there's zero reason to discuss further.
The other is Mozilla apologism, even more in hands of Google or WebKit apologism in hands of Apple AND Google. Google dominate Web standarts, that is a fact because of its story as reference company in Internet. It's not about browser engines, it's nowadays irrelevant which you use and certainly not the point of the Google incommings. Same as with the discussions of the end of Mv2 and everybody said that is a problem for Chromium, relaying on the Chrome Store, Certainly with Chromium 146 ends the support of Mv2, but it will sooner or later also end for all other browsers, like in 2013 the end of Mv1.
Mv3 is a new standart for extensions, which limit somewhat the amount of filters in the adblocking, but improved the privacy due a different cookie handling. In real tests the difference is irrelevant for the user (eg. Adblock Plus is currently Mv3). Also irrelevant for browsers with inbuild adblockers, whose filterlists don't depends on Google. Apart beeing a new standart means for the devs the maintance and release of two versions of their extensions, Mv2 and Mv3, to be able to stay in the stores, means also that NOBODY would support Mv2 for infinite, even not Firefox and forks, at least if they don't also include an ad/trackerblocker in the browsers with independent filterlists.
That are the facts, without Vivaldi apologism.
Yeah sure. Im trusting Google with privacy. Eye roll
Go peddle the apologism elsewhere. Besides that, give Google time convincing people like you manifest 3 is fine before they make it even worse so you can't block ads. Imagine trusting an AD COMPANY to make the internet better.
Head firmly in the sand.
but more practical
on bootleg streaming sites the ads are too much
on phones Vivaldi shines very bright by having a built-in adblocker
combine this with a VPN and cooking with fire
Firefox mobile let's you use extensions, and if you know what youre doing you can even use desktop extensions. IronFox (Hardened FF mobile) comes with ublock origin by default. Then, if you use Mullvad VPN, you can install the Mullvad proxy extension and have up to 3 hops within your phone alone.
does vivaldi android have addons support (uBO)? or is the builtin adblock good enough?
good enough for sure
Until Firefox gets better tab stacking, I will stick with Vivaldi. Its tab stacking is miles ahead of any other browser
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups
They did just recently make it a lot more convenient to manage tabs. I haven't used Vivaldi in a long time, so I don't know how it would compare. It's better than it was, though.
Seems to be slightly better than what I saw when I tried it last year. I just dislike their overall implementation, I hope a fork will have something more like vivaldi someday
tree style tabs works really well tho, i haven't even tried mozilla's implementation yet sinve TST works so well
That's not for me, I need tab stacking
I love Vivaldi. I love its download graph.
And I love that it surfaces RSS and as an icon and other things like reader and qr code, as well as being able to install any site via simple right click on a tab as opposed to being buried like everyone else.
has vivaldi fixed the sync stuff yet? that's the reason I switched from it before. Seemed like depending on which way the wind was blowing sync would either work or not work. If they managed to get that working and working reliably i'd move back to it. Yeah I really don't care that it's chromium, it's a decent browser and having an email client built in is very nice.
The sync situation has definitely improved but I experience occasional hiccups. What bothers me the most at the moment is that the address bar is very forgetful of your browsing history, you need to open the history tab way more often than you should need to. And even then it doesn't go back more than a few months it feels like.