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Vivaldi is releasing an Android version of its highly-customizable browser

Vivaldi is releasing an Android version of its highly-customizable browser

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Coming out in beta today

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Image: Vivaldi

Vivaldi, a web browser from a group of developers that formerly worked on Opera, is one to consider if you really want to customize your browsing experience. Now, Vivaldi is bringing that power-user spirit to mobile with a new Android version, available today in beta.

The Android version offers a number of features that will be familiar to current Vivaldi users. Whenever you open a new tab, you’ll see your Speed Dials, which are grids of saved site shortcuts and bookmarks that you can organize and customize. If you want to use a specific search engine without navigating directly to it, you’ll be able to type custom “nicknames” in the address bar, like “d” for DuckDuckGo, and your search will route through that engine. And you’ll be able to type up notes without switching to a separate app.

Image: Vivaldi

Vivaldi also says it will also let you sync bookmarks, Speed Dials, passwords, autofill information, and those notes I mentioned across your desktop and mobile sessions, and claims this data is protected with end-to-end encryption by default. By comparison, Firefox’s account sync also has default end-to-end encryption, but Google only offers the end-to-end flavor (meaning Google can’t see what you’re syncing back and forth) if you set an optional passphrase.

Vivaldi’s mobile browser beta doesn’t seem to offer everything that the desktop version does — desktop Vivaldi’s cool ability to stack tabs into one tab seems to be missing, for example. If you’ve been waiting for a Vivaldi-like experience on mobile, though, the company’s official Android release sounds like it’s worth checking out.