Vivaldi, makers of the power user’s favorite web browser, have finally released a mobile version. Vivaldi for Android (sorry iOS users, it’s Android-only for now) brings most of what’s great about Vivaldi to your phone, and thanks to Vivaldi’s sync service you can have all your desktop data on your mobile device.

Web browsers are perhaps the most important piece of software we use. Our devices are often little more than small windows onto the web. The web browser is what we use to see and explore what’s in that window. For all their importance though, the modern web browser, especially the mobile web browser, offers precious little in the way of features. It displays the web and that’s about it. Want to interact with what you see? You’re mostly out of luck.

Most people probably like their browser this way. Google, maker of the most widely-used mobile browser, rarely does anything without extensive user testing. If Chrome is minimalist it’s safe to assume it’s that way because Google has determined that’s what its users want. And since most other browsers copy whatever Google Chrome does, most mobile web browsers end up very minimalist pieces of software.

On the desktop there has long been an exception to the uniformly dumbed-down offerings of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari – Vivaldi.

Led by CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and former CEO of Opera, Vivaldi’s primary goal is to build a useful browser, a tool you can bend to your will rather than the other way around. Vivaldi is a tool you can customize the way you like, its preferences may be overwhelming at first glance, but if you dig in you can make Vivaldi do just about whatever you want it to do. For this reason Vivaldi is often called a “power user’s browser”. As opposed, I guess, to the powerless user’s browser.

For all that there was always one big problem with Vivaldi: it was desktop only. The company said it was working on a mobile version from the beginning, and von Tetzchner told me several times he was already using it, but there was nothing for the rest of us.

Now Vivaldi Mobile is here, for Android users at least. Technically it’s a beta release and all the common cautions regarding beta software apply, but I’ve been using it for over a month now and have had no problems. Or, I should say, I have had problems, but updates prior to the public release eliminated all of them. And even if there were still bugs, Vivaldi would still be more useful than any other browser on my phone – and yes, I’ve tried nearly all of them, even the small, cottage efforts.

Sync and Mobile UI

Vivaldi Mobile is surprisingly feature-complete for a beta release.

The headlining feature for now – aside from the mere existence of a mobile version, finally – is the syncing. Building on the syncing support that debuted in Vivaldi’s 2.0 release, all your bookmarks, tabs, history, and notes are now available on your phone.

The sync happens both ways of course, so I can click the cloud icon at the top of the browser on my laptop and get quick access to any open tabs on my phone. Notes and bookmarks from my phone appear whenever a sync happens.

If you, like me, make heavy use of Vivaldi’s bookmarks, notes, and history search, having this synced to your phone is enough to make Vivaldi Mobile more powerful than other mobile browsers, but of course Vivaldi’s take on mobile isn’t limited to syncing.

Unlike your more minimalist mobile browsers, Vivaldi adds a menu bar to the bottom of the page, giving you quick thumb access to a series of options along the bottom of the screen. On the left is the mobile version of Vivaldi’s Panel, which brings up a new screen that contains bookmarks, history, notes, and downloads. Swipe horizontally to move between them.

Unlike the desktop, you can’t add anything to this panel (frankly, it wouldn’t really make sense to, it’s an overlaying screen that hides the rest of your content, not a side panel).

The bottom menu bar also offers back and forward buttons, speed dial, and access to all your open tabs. The center button is actually context-based, so it’s a speed dial button on a web page, but when you’re in speed dial it becomes a search button.

When you scroll content, the both the bottom menu bar and the URL bar are hidden away, maximizing the amount of space available for the actual website. Scroll up and both bars come back. This strikes a nice balance between having the tools you want at your fingertips, and yet also being able to focus on the content of a webpage.

At the top of the screen there’s a URL bar and Vivaldi icon. As with the desktop version you can prefix your searches with a letter to use different search engines. For example, the string “d Vivaldi” would search DuckDuckGo for the term “Vivaldi”. The mobile version supports the same search engines found in the desktop version.

Tap the Vivaldi icon and you’ll get a main menu very similar to what you’ll see in Chrome or Firefox, though there are some Vivaldi-specific customizations, like an option to clone the current tab, add a bookmark, access your recent tabs, or grab a screenshot of the current page. The latter will produce a screenshot of either the current viewport or the entire page. Screen captures are, unfortunately, not currently synced with the desktop.

You can work around the lack of image sync using a separate sync service like Nextcloud or Dropbox. I set up Nextcloud to automatically upload anything in the Vivaldi screen captures folder on my phone and sync it to the Vivaldi screen captures folder on my laptop. It’s not ideal, but until Vivaldi supports syncing images, it works. I should also note that Vivaldi doesn’t currently sync images attached to notes. You do get all your notes synced from the desktop, but not the images that go with them. Currently there does not seem to be a way to add an image to a note in Vivaldi Mobile.

There’s also a bug in the UI that doesn’t allow you to add a URL when manually creating a note in Vivaldi Mobile. The developers are aware of this and I was told it would be fixed after launch. For now, if you like having your notes attached to a URL, use the “copy to note” option in the context menu, which will create a note with your highlighted text and attach the current URL to the note.

The main menu is where you access the settings for Vivaldi Mobile. It’s early days for Vivaldi Mobile so there’s currently nowhere near the level of settings and UI control you’ll find in the desktop version. There’s all the standard settings inherited from Chromium – passwords, payment methods, saved address controls, notification settings, privacy, accessibility and so on – along with some Vivaldi-specific controls like the option to set your default search engine and sign into your Vivaldi sync account.

One of the things that sets Vivaldi apart on the desktop is the way it allows you to interact with the web more than most browsers. The best thing about the mobile version is that Vivaldi has stuck with this approach of doing more. The tools for interacting with the web, creating notes for example, are largely the same in the Mobile Version. For example, select some text and the context menu that appears will have an option to “copy to note”, which mirrors the context menu on the desktop.

Similarly, tools like page capture don’t just exist, but are easy to access – just one tap to open the main menu, another to capture the page – which is refreshing change from the usual, “bury it five menus down so it’s not the way” approach of other browsers.

What’s Not There

Like Google’s mobile version of Chrome – which is also built off the Chromium project – Vivaldi has left extensions to the desktop for now.

Originally Vivaldi did try to enable extensions. In fact, I suspect this is part of what took so long for the mobile version to be released. The problem, according to von Tetzchner, was that it quickly became apparent that to support extensions Vivaldi would risk lagging behind when Chromium release updates.

Extension support requires significant changes to Chromium code, changes that it would be up to Vivaldi to maintain (and continue to update down the road, should Chromium change anything). Vivaldi has opted, for now at least, to make sure that it stays up-to-date with Chromium releases even though that means no support for extensions in the mobile version.

It’s worth noting here that Vivaldi Mobile compiles its own version of Chromium. Many smaller browsers without the programming resources of, for example, Google or Opera, simple render pages with the version of Chromium that ships with Android. While this works, the system version of Chromium doesn’t get updates very often. This is why larger browser makers, including Google, ship with their own bundled version of Chromium with their browsers. This is what Vivaldi is doing as well.

I point this out because in theory it is possible that down the road Vivaldi could decided the maintenance effort of customizing Chromium to add support for extensions is workable, though personally I would not hold my breath.

While I am not a heavy extension user (in desktop Vivaldi I use only three extensions), I do miss some kind of ad blocker. Like the mobile version of Chrome, Vivaldi Mobile has an option “Block Ads on Abusive Sites”, but it doesn’t block much.

I’d love to see Vivaldi embrace some kind of built-in ad blocking solution on mobile. This is one place I think Opera Mobile has an edge over Vivaldi.

I recognize that I am writing this on a website at least partly supported by advertising, which has a certain irony to it, but on mobile ad-blocking seems like an even more legitimate feature due to bandwidth constraints. Ad blocking on mobile saves bandwidth, which translates to saving money for many users.

For now you’ll have to live with ads in Vivaldi Mobile, just like you live with them in Chrome. If want ad blocking on mobile your options are Opera, or Firefox with an add-on. Alternatively you can do what I do: disable JavaScript. That stops ads and a host of other things I find irritating, but of course it also breaks half the web. I have go through and whitelist sites where I want JavaScript, which is time consuming and not for most people.

It’s the beginning, but it’s enough

If you like Vivaldi on the desktop you’re going to like it on a phone as well. It’s still early days, and there are half a dozen things I’d like to see added to Vivaldi Mobile, especially support for user profile switching.

Still, the syncing features alone make this a welcome release for anyone at all invested in Vivaldi’s various tools. Bringing your notes, bookmarks, and other data to mobile is the first step. In the end it may be the only step you really need.

Much of Vivaldi’s appeal lies in its tools that go beyond mere browsing. With Vivaldi you can take notes, grab screenshots and attach them to notes, create web panels, view two (or more!) pages side by side, and so on.

But the form factor of mobile devices discourages this kind of participatory browsing. The longer I’ve used Vivaldi Mobile the more I’ve realized the limitations of the form factor. Typing is awkward, even just selecting text can be an exercise in frustration at times. In some ways mobile is meant to be passive.

For instance, while I think I want to add sites to the Panel like I can on the desktop (where I keep reference sites, and chat windows just a click away), where would the panel go on mobile? I’d want it to be near fullscreen to interact with, but then how would that be different than just another page in a tab?

Another thing I use all the time is tab tiling. If you have a big enough phone this might work. Some of my testing was done on a Sony Xperia 1, which is tall enough to make tab tiling workable with a horizontal split, but on most phones I think tab tiling would make tabs too small to be useful.

In the end I’ve come to the conclusion that the main thing I ever really wanted from Vivaldi Mobile, is exactly what this release gives you – a good browser, all your data, and key extras like note support.

Perhaps less really is more. Then again, I like to think Vivaldi has clever people thinking up clever ways to take all those features I just mentioned and bring them to mobile in way that makes them just as great as they are on the desktop.