Vivaldi 5.0 launches with major tab enhancements on Android, translation panel on desktop

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Vivaldi 5.0 for all supported desktop operating systems and Google Android was released on Thursday 2, 2021. The new version of the Vivaldi web browser marks an important milestone for the company.

The new version is now available. Desktop and Android users should receive it automatically via the built-in auto update feature.

Desktop users can select Vivaldi Menu> Help> Check for Updates to display the installed version and run a manual check for updates. The new version must be found, downloaded, and installed at that time.

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android significantly improves tab management in the Vivaldi browser. The mobile browser already supported a tab bar on Android, similar to how tab bars work in desktop browsers.

With Vivaldi 5.0 comes the two-level tab stack support. The function adds a second tab bar at the user’s request to the selected tab.

Here’s how you enable it:

Press and hold the “new tab” icon in the Vivaldi for Android interface. A selection menu appears.
Select “Create new tab stack” from the context menu.

The tab stack is added to the active tab. All other tabs that are open remain single-level tabs. Another option to open a stack of tabs in the mobile version of Vivaldi is to do it from the tab switcher. Vivaldi explains how that works in the following sentence:

While looking at the tab thumbnails, simply drag one tab on top of another to create a new stack.

Vivaldi posted a video on YouTube demonstrating the feature:

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The new version of Vivaldi for Android introduces two additional improvements related to tabs. The close button is only displayed on the active tab by default. Vivaldi users can restore the close button on all tabs in Settings.

Users who have many tabs open in the browser can benefit from a new display option that shows only the favicon of the sites in tabs. This leaves room for many tabs in the tab bar’s visual area and works well with Vivaldi’s new two-level tab stacking feature for Android.

Vivaldi calculates the width of the tabs in the browser dynamically as of this version. The feature works identically to the way desktop browsers resize tabs based on the number of tabs open in the browser and the width of the browser window.

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android can shrink tabs to favicon if many tabs are open, but will keep the title displayed if only one or a few tabs are open.

Vivaldi users who prefer dark mode for sites can enable the option in Vivaldi Menu> Settings> Theme> Dark mode for web pages.

The websites are shown in dark mode from then on, but there is an override in the main menu to disable it for certain sites; this is useful if the site does not display correctly when the mode is enabled.

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Another new feature is the option to add text to notes in Vivaldi for Android.

Vivaldi 5.0 for Android tablets and Chromebooks has been optimized to take better advantage of the larger screens these devices have.

Larger Android devices have access to dashboards in the new version, which work similar to how dashboards work on the desktop. Panels can be turned on and off, and provide access to features such as bookmarks, notes, or downloads.

Vivaldi 5.0 for the desktop

The desktop version of Vivaldi has seen improvements in two main areas in this update: themes and translation.

Themes can now be created and shared using Vivaldi; the feature opens up new options, including downloading themes from the new theme repository on the Vivaldi website.

To get started, select Vivaldi Menu> Tools> Settings> Themes. Switch to the Editor on the page to edit the theme’s background colors, settings and images. The new export option is also on the page. The themes are exported as zip files and can be imported at any time using the new import option.

The browser’s translation feature, powered by a self-hosted instance of Lingvanex, has also seen enhancements in Vivaldi 5.0. The new Translation Panel allows users to translate text fragments in the browser. While you could previously translate selected texts in Vivaldi, it is getting easier with the new Translation Panel.

Select the Translate icon from the browser sidebar to get started. You may need to activate the sidebar by clicking the leftmost icon in the lower toolbar of the browser.

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The Translate panel supports copying and pasting entries, but can also be configured to translate text selections automatically. For that, check the option “automatically translate selected text” in the panel.

Vivaldi includes a translation history page to search for previous translations in the browser.

Translations should also be faster according to Vivaldi:

It’s a challenge to integrate a translation feature into a browser and get everything running fast under heavy load. Therefore, a lot of work has been done to achieve this ambitious goal. With significant development and rigorous testing before launch, speed improvements will help you deliver faster translations.

Downloads in Vivaldi can be displayed in a pop-up window instead of the dashboard. The option must be activated in the Vivaldi Menu> Tools> Settings> Downloads> Show downloads in a pop-up window.