Vivaldi launches Android beta browser with note-taking and screenshot features

Vivaldi is a web browser based on the Chromium engine that provides a lot of **customisation and features** on desktop. Expanding on its goal to build the best web browsing experience, it has now released a mobile browser in beta, starting with Android. The new mobile browser comes with a set of expected features including tabbed browsing, bookmark manager, private browsing, and more. It also brings a few useful features including ‘Speed Dials’, ‘Notes’, and ‘Capture’. [caption id=“attachment_7307701” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Vivaldi web browser for Android in beta. Image: Vivaldi.[/caption] Firing up the app displays the start page that has several tabs, or as Vivaldi calls them, ‘Speed Dials’. This makes it quicker to open your favourite websites without having to type it out in the address bar. It’s completely user-customisable, so if you don’t like the default ones then you can remove them, add new websites and organise them into folders. The mobile browser supports both light and dark themes. In the default setting, it will choose the system default theme. [caption id=“attachment_7307711” align=“alignnone” width=“1920”]  Dark theme on Vivaldi Android browser. Image: Vivaldi.[/caption] Vivaldi’s mobile browser design tries to deliver a user-friendly UI that makes navigation easier. Instead of having to go through multiple steps to reach some menus, it can be done with just one or two taps. On the bottom-left, the ‘Panels’ tab combines bookmarks, history, notes (more on this later) and downloads. One cool feature we liked inside the downloads tab was the filter that displays all your downloaded files based on the file format. All the menus inside are left and right swipeable for easy navigation. ‘Notes’ is something that is unique for a mobile browser, however, it’s more likely that you’d use a standalone note-taking app rather than an in-built app. If you’re among the ones who make the most of their notes while browsing, then this feature is for you. It lets you create a regular note or one with checklists. Thanks to the sync functionality, your notes can be synced across devices. [caption id=“attachment_7307681” align=“alignnone” width=“1920”]  Creating notes on Vivaldi web browser. Image: Vivaldi.[/caption] An interesting feature was easy-switching between search engines in the address. All the pre-installed search engines have nicknames saved as the first letter, so typing ‘g’ followed by a space will switch to Google or ‘d’ will switch to ‘DuckDuckGo’. Vivaldi mobile browser features ‘Reader View’ that has to be enabled in the Settings under the Accessibility menu. You will have to enable ‘Simplified view for web pages’ and whenever you open any web page with articles, a pop-up will appear at the bottom to enable it on the current page. Probably the most useful feature among the lot, Vivaldi mobile browser’s ‘Capture’ lets you take webpage screenshots. It goes one step further by giving you the option to either take screenshots of the entire web page or only the visible area. [caption id=“attachment_7307691” align=“alignnone” width=“1920”]  Full web page screenshot feature on Vivaldi for Android. Image: Vivaldi.[/caption] Vivaldi for Android is currently available in beta for devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop and above. It’s available on the Play Store to download and the company says that the tablet version of the mobile browser is still under development.