You can make your Vivaldi blog truly personal by customising it. The Customise page gives you a live preview of all the changes you make to the look and feel of your blog.

To access the personalisation options, go to the blog’s Dashboard > Appearance > Customise. When you’re viewing your own blog, you can go to the Customisation page directly from the top menu as well. Themes, Widgets, and Menus can also be customised on their respective pages.

To edit a section on your blog, either go to the respective item in the menu or click on the pencil icon in the preview.

In addition to the desktop view, you can also get a preview of what the blog will look like on smaller screens – on tablets and smart phones. For a better preview, you can temporarily hide the controls.

Make sure to click Save and Publish to save all the changes that you made, or X to cancel.

Customisation options

Themes

Choose between 3 different layouts for your blog:

• Classic (on the left) – A classic single column blog layout with a sidebar on the right. Add buttons for social media profiles. Choose from a selection of fonts and colour schemes.
• Simple (in the middle) – A straightforward, single-column layout with the option to add widgets to the footer. Add buttons for social media profiles. Choose from a selection of fonts and colour schemes.
• Magazine (on the right) – A straightforward, single-column layout with the option to add widgets to the footer. Add buttons for social media profiles. Choose from a selection of fonts and colour schemes.

Site Identity

Blog title is required when first creating the blog, but here you can change it. You can also add a logo and a tagline or hide everything altogether.

Fonts

There are 9 different fonts available to choose from. Different fonts can be used for text and headlines.

Social links

Let readers know on which Social Media platforms they can find you. Social links can be displayed in the blog header or together with the widgets.

Colours

Once you’ve picked a theme for your blog, you can customise it further by changing the colour scheme. You can choose between light, dark and colourful themes.

In addition, you can change the blog title’s colour here, as well as in the Header Image section.

Header Image

You can add an image to the top of the blog as a background image for the title, logo, tagline and social media links, if you’ve chosen to display them.

Pick from the selection of soft gradients or upload your own image.

Menus

To directly link to pages, posts, categories, tags, and URLs add a menu to your blog. The menu will be displayed between the page title/header image and blog content.

Widgets

Customise your blog by adding widgets that add content and features to your blog. With the Classic theme, widgets will be displayed on the side (see image below). With the Simple and Magazine themes, widgets will be at the bottom of the page.

Homepage Settings

Select whether the front page features your latest posts in reverse chronological order or a static page you’ve created.

Settings

You can change a number of settings from  “Your blog title” > Dashboard > Settings:

• General – change the blog’s title and tagline, as well as language and time formatting of the blog.
• Writing – change the default category for blog posts and the default post type (Gallery, Chat, Quote, Video, etc). Switch between the Classic editor and Gutenberg’s block editor.
• Reading –  edit what is displayed on your front page and how many posts are shown per page and in feeds. Here, you can also decide whether you want the feeds to display a full article or only a snippet. Another option you can decide in here is whether or not you want your blog to be indexed by search engines. Your posts will not be visible on Vivaldi.net‘s home page or categories if you disable this option.
• Discussion – change article and comment settings including how comments are moderated.
  • If you notice that your blog posts are getting spam comments, we suggest you enable the option: “Users must be registered and logged in to comment“. That way only logged in Vivaldi Community members can comment.
• Media –  determine the maximum dimensions of images used in the blog.
• Permalinks – alter the way blog links are generated for new posts and pages.
• Akismet Anti-spam – For additional spam filtering, you can set up an Akismet account and obtain an API key to activate the anti-spam plugin for your blog.
• Code Syntax Block Settings – If you use code blocks in your posts, you can choose a color scheme for the code block and define your default programming language.

Tools

From “Your blog title” > Dashboard > Tools you can:

• Import and Export content to and from your other blogs.
• Delete your blog.

If you’d like to take advantage of as much screen real estate as possible, you can browse Vivaldi in fullscreen mode.

Hide browser’s user interface

Furthermore, you can toggle the user interface visibility by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F11 / ⌘ F10. It’s also possible to hide individual UI elements like the Panel or Address bar with Keyboard Shortcuts. You can set and edit shortcuts for each toolbar in Settings > Keyboard > View.

The Android version of Vivaldi is available in many of the cars that have the Android Automotive OS (AAOS). For example, Polestar, Renault, Volvo, Wolksvagen, Mercedes, Audi and more.

Install Vivaldi

To install Vivaldi in your car:

1. Open the Google Play app in the car’s center console.
2. Search for “Vivaldi Browser”.
3. Tap on Install.
4. Launch the app and start exploring.

Using Vivaldi in your car

To ensure the safety of the drivers and passengers, the browser can be used only when the car is parked. Streaming content may continue audio-only if driving commences.

In addition, some functional restrictions may apply, for example, files cannot be downloaded. Other than that, the browser in AAOS has the same features and works the same way as Vivaldi on Android on phones and tablets.

Need help?

In case you have questions for which you haven’t found an answer from the Android section of the Help Pages start a discussion in the Automotive category of the Vivaldi Forum, where the Vivaldi Team and expert users in the Community will answer any of your questions. In case you’ve encountered a bug, please report it on vivaldi.com/bugreport and select the relevant car brand for the affected product.

Private browsing mode is intended to protect your privacy from other users of your computer. When you browse using a Private Window, Vivaldi will minimize what is stored locally on your computer so that very few traces are left of what you were browsing once you close all private browsing windows.

To open a Private Window:

• Go to the  Vivaldi menu (Windows and Linux) > File  > New Private Window;
• Type ‘New Private Window‘ in Quick Commands;
• Use the Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl Shift N / ⌘ Shift N;
• Create a new Mouse Gesture for opening a new private window.

Private Window Theme

Vivaldi has a separate theme for Private Windows to make it easier to differentiate them from regular Windows. To change the Private Window Theme:

1. Go to Settings > Themes > Private Window Theme.
2. Select a theme from the drop down menu.

Private Window Search Engine

The default Search Engines can be different in regular and private windows. To select a search engine for Private Window:

1. Go to Settings > Search > Private Window Search Engine.
2. Select a Search Engine from the drop down menu.

A few things to keep in mind about using Private Windows

• Using a Private Window does not encrypt or otherwise modify your connection.
• All private windows share the same session while they are open, so you need to close all of them to cause the session data to be deleted.
• A Private Window in Vivaldi does not use the same cookie store or cache as for regular browsing.
• Third-party cookies are blocked by default. To change it, go to Settings > Privacy > Cookies > Third-party cookies.
• It does not store the history of addresses that you visit.
• It tries – as much as possible – to only store website cache files in memory instead of on disk, so that disk scanning tools will not find residual traces of the files.
• If you intentionally download something, that content cannot be protected. Downloads are downloads, whether they start in private browsing mode or not.

If you have forgotten to use private browsing mode, you can select Delete Browsing Data from the Tools menu to either delete all your browsing history, or just the history for a selected amount of time. Of course, this cannot remove traces from the disk so disk scanning tools may be able to find traces.

Always open Vivaldi in a Private Window

To open a Private Window without opening a normal window first, follow these instructions.

Securely Downloading official Vivaldi packages

To ensure you have an official version of Vivaldi, type “https://vivaldi.com/download/” and press “Enter”. On visiting this website, you should expect to see a padlocked badge in the URL field stating, “Vivaldi Technologies [NO]”. In almost all browsers, you can click the badge to view more details about the certificate.

Checking signatures

All official installation packages from Vivaldi are signed. You can check the signatures of these packages via the following methods:

Windows

Right-click on the installer package, then choose “Properties → Digital Signatures”. Here, “Vivaldi Technologies AS” should be listed. Selecting this and clicking “Details” should result in a new window that states, “This digital signature is OK”. For even more details, click on “View Certificate”.

macOS

Extract Vivaldi from the .dmg installation package and place it in “Applications”.

Open the “Terminal” application and enter the following:

codesign -dv --verbose=2 /Applications/Vivaldi.app

In the results there should be no errors about lack of signing and the “Authority” lines must include “Apple Root CA”, “Developer ID Certification Authority” and “Developer ID Application: Vivaldi Technologies AS (4XF3XNRN6Y)”.

You can also check if the application bundle is trusted by your system via the following command:

spctl --assess -vv /Applications/Vivaldi.app

For more information on examining macOS code signatures see the Apple developer documentation.

Linux

Unlike Windows and macOS, our Linux packages are self-signed. The public signing key is included within the packages and configured automatically during first install, meaning that your system will check it when you attempt to upgrade the application (via our official repositories), and will only proceed it if it is valid. If however, you want to manually check the package signatures, you first need to download and install the public key yourself.

Debian/Ubuntu

Open a terminal window and issue the following to fetch a copy of our public key, securely over https:

wget https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/linux_signing_key.pub

Import the key into the GPG keyring of your local user:

gpg --import linux_signing_key.pub

You can now verify that the signature is valid, like so (adjust the file name to account for the current version and architecture):

dpkg-sig --verify vivaldi-stable_5.4.2753.47-1_amd64.deb

If everything is ok, it should return a result that includes “GOODSIG” and a 41 character, key ID that should end with “C27AA466”.

RPM-based

Import the key into the RPM database:

sudo rpm --import https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/linux_signing_key.pub

You can now verify that the signature is valid, like so (adjust the file name to account for the current version and architecture):

rpm -Kv vivaldi-stable-5.4.2753.47-1.x86_64.rpm

The signature checks should return “OK” and key ID should be “c27aa466”.

We build Vivaldi with the needs of our sizeable community in mind. If you have an idea for a feature you’d like to see in the browser, let us know on the Forum!

Searching for existing feature requests

To collect all votes under one post and limit the number of duplicate requests, please look for other feature requests, before posting your own. You can browse through already requested feature topics by logging in to the Forum and going to the relevant feature request category:

• Desktop
• Mail, Calendar & Feeds
• Mobile
• Android Automotive
• Community & Services

To search for a feature request:

Option 1

1. Click on the Search for feature requests button in the top right of the feature requests page.
2. Enter a search term in the search field.
3. Press Enter or click Search below advanced search options.

Option 2

1. Enter the search term in the Search filed near the top right corner of the forum.
2. Select the category or categories you want to search in. Hold down Ctrl or Shift to select multiple categories or tick the box for Search child categories.
3. Press Enter or click Search below advanced search options.

When you’ve found a feature that you’d like to see implemented, click on the thumps up button below the first post.

Leave a comment if you have anything to add to the feature request.

Posting a new feature request

• If the feature hasn’t been requested, start a new topic. Post only one feature request per topic.
• If possible, post in the relevant subcategory. Admins and moderators may move your post, if they feel there’s a better location for your request. You can see all your posts on your profile.
• Choose a clear and concise title for the topic and describe the feature in more detail in the body of the post.
• Duplicate feature requests will be tagged as such and moved to Archive.
• Discuss requested features under each post.
• Check tags such as “Done”, “In progress“, “Pipeline”, “Duplicate” and “Will not do” for the status of requested features.
• Feature requests can be sorted by “Newest to Oldest”, “Oldest to newest”, “Most posts (most discussed)” and “Most votes”.
• Offensive language and ALL CAPS posts will be edited or even deleted.

Don’t have a Vivaldi.net account? Find out here how to create one. 

Thank you all for being part of our journey and for helping us make Vivaldi the browser you need it to be!

A “crash” occurs when Vivaldi encounters an unrecoverable error and shuts down unexpectedly or a tab’s contents disappear and are replaced with a “dead bird” image. Information pertaining to the crash is logged by Vivaldi.

Enable automatic crash reporting

When you enable automatic crash reporting, we will receive the crash logs automatically. You can enable crash reporting during the welcome flow after installing the browser, or any time in Settings.

To enable automatic crash reporting:

1. Go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Privacy > Crash Reporting.
2. Enable Allow Vivaldi to Send Automatic Crash Reports.

Provide additional information

By adding context to the crash, the team will have an easier time fixing the bug that’s causing the crash. You can do that by filing a bug report that gets linked to your crash log.

To file a bug report about the crash:

1. Go to vivaldi:crashes.
2. Look for a crash log that was created around the time you witnessed the crash.
3. Click on Provide additional details.
   You’ll be taken to our bug report page, where the crash’s ID is already prefilled in the Summary field.
4. Fill out the form with information you think is relevant to the crash, such as steps to trigger the crash.
5. Submit the bug report.

Manual crash reporting

If you don’t want to report all crashes to us automatically, you can still forward individual crash logs to us manually.

To report crashes:

1. Go to vivaldi:crashes.
2. Look for a crash log that was created around the time you witnessed the crash.
3. Click “Send now”.

In case the crash occurs as you’re opening Vivaldi and you’re not able to visit vivaldi:crashes, you can locate the crash logs following these instrcuctions:

1. Open the “Run” dialog—[Windows Key]+R
2. Copy the following text (triple click to select) and paste it in the dialog "%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Crashpad\reports"
3. Look for a crash log that was created around the time you witnessed the crash—sort by “Date”.

As an alternative, use the Windows batch file contained within this archive to automate all of the above. Extract the batch file from the archive, run it and it will create a compressed archive for you, containing crash logs from your most recently installed Vivaldi version.

Then, go to vivaldi.com/bugreport and fill out the form with details about the crash and attach the crash log file to the report.

HTML5 “proprietary” audio and video includes all media types that are patented, such H.264 (video) and AAC (audio).

Testing support

To test proprietary media support, try and play the following test video.

Installing proprietary media support

If the test video didn’t play, restart Vivaldi once. This will cause a reinstall of the appropriate support files, in cases where they did not get installed alongside Vivaldi with the initial install or upgrade .

Troubleshooting

If the test video above will still not play, file a bug report stating that you run Linux and cannot play proprietary media. Mention your Linux distribution and distribution version. It is also recommended that you create a media log by running the following command in a terminal. Triple click the following line and copy it to your clipboard, paste it into a terminal window (Ctrl+Shift+V), then press Enter:

bash -x -- /opt/vivaldi/update-ffmpeg --user 2> "${XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR:-$HOME/Downloads}/vivaldi-media-log-$(date '+%Y%V%u%H').txt"

You can attach the generated log (found in your Downloads directory) to the bug you create.

Most audio/video streaming services also require Encrypted Media Extensions to function. If you are able to play the test video above but continue to have issues with streaming services, you should also check out our guide to Widevine CDM (for EME/DRM support).

Vivaldi for ARM (32bit with hardware floating point) can be found here:

Just select “Linux DEB ARM” from the drop down menu.

Below are some tips to make the most of it.

Installing Vivaldi for ARM on non-Debian based distros

Use “install-vivaldi.sh” : sh install-vivaldi.sh --final (more info)

Widevine and Flash

If you need to access websites using Encrypted Media Extensions (.e.g. Spotify) or sites that use Flash (e.g. Tidal), you can extract Widevine and Flash binaries for Linux ARMhf from ChromeOS recovery images. Simply run this script on a Linux machine to extract the files.

Netflix

To make this work you will need to have already installed Widevine. Additionally, you will need to alter the browser’s User Agent. To change your User Agent, install the extension User-Agent Switcher for Google Chrome, open the “Options” and configure a new “Custom User-Agent”, like so:

• New User-agent name: Netflix
• New User-Agent String:
  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 10895.56.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.131 Safari/537.36
• Group: Chrome
• Append?: Replace
• Indicator Flag: NFX

Enable this User Agent and then proceed to logging into Netflix.

Whilst it is possible to play videos this way, it is not recommended on any recent Raspberry Pi, other than for a bit of fun. The resolution is very poor and you will most likely get a lot of dropped frames.

Increasing the size of the swap file

For smooth running of Vivaldi on Raspberry Pi, we recommend to increase swap space. Open a “Terminal” and use the following command to change the SWAP from 100MB to change it to 2048MB:

echo CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048 | sudo tee -a /etc/dphys-swapfile

Then restart the swap service to apply the changes:

sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start

Making this change may diminish the the life of your SD card.

Stopping the “hiss” when using analog out (Raspberry Pi 3)

If you are using Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi 3 and hear a his when listening to music or watching videos, issue the follow command in a “Terminal” and then restart the Raspberry Pi:

echo audio_pwm_mode=2 | sudo tee -a /boot/config.txt