Opera Software introduced several new features to development editions of its browsers in the past couple of months. I reviewed the new tab management and dynamic themes feature just recently.
Today, Opera Software announced the launch of Opera One R2, the next stable version of its web browser. This release is feature-packed, and it includes some good news for users who want to keep using their classic extensions.
The details:
- Opera One R2 is available for all supported desktop platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac).
- It introduces several new features, including dynamic themes and the tab management feature.
Existing users may select Opera Menu > Update & Recovery to download and install the update. New users may download the installer from the Opera website.
Opera One R2: the changes
Opera published a long post on the official blog that details all the changes of the new release. Most of it talks about AI, but there are also changes that are not AI related or at least locally processed instead of in the cloud.
Since I have reviewed one of the features already, I will summarize it quickly only in this article. You can check out the links at the top of the page for detailed reviews.
Dynamic Themes is a new option to customize the look and feel of the browser. They support more than just colors and setting a background image. You may use them to add music, animated backgrounds or change UI elements such as colors. They use the device’s GPU for “smooth rendering”.
Tip: you can reduce animations in the browser in the Settings > Features > User Interface section.
Tab improvements
While Opera has not introduced support for the new AI-powered tab management feature in Opera One R2, it does introduce the following new features:
- Split Screen – This enables you to display two tabs side by side to display two sites at once. This is not a unique feature, as browsers such as Vivaldi or Edge supported this for a well.
- Tab Traces — a memory for the five recently used tabs. Opera adds an underscore to these tabs so that you may identify them quickly from a list of tabs open in the browser.
AI features
A few AI features are now also available for stable Opera One users.
- Image generation — Use AI to generate images. The process is started from the AI command bar or sidebar chat in Opera. Limit is 5 images per day for anonymous users and 30 per day for Opera account users.
- Image understanding — Aria may provide information about images that you upload to the AI.
Other new features
There is more!
- Control music and video from the sidebar – You may now control playback of media from Opera One’s sidebar. Pause or skip media using the feature. You may also add your “preferred streaming service” to the sidebar.
- Detachable videos and video calls
- Multithreaded Compositor – Manages the rendering of the user interface efficiently.
- Support for Manifest V2 extensions remains – Opera announced plans to support Manifest V2 extensions independently of other browsers.
Now you: what is your take on these features? Anything that you find interesting or would make you switch to Opera? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
If not for AI, I could have been somewhat interested to investigate it further. But for now, I am happy with Brave, Floorp and Mullvad browsers. I really do not need more than three browsers for everything.
I am not against AI 100%. But I do not want it to be built in into the Operating System or Browser. The AI I actually want is either very expensive for the hubby or just not good enough yet, or both.