Opera’s browser has been a game-changer for me

I have a confession: I wasn’t really familiar with the browser company Opera at the start of the year. I’ve used Google Chrome for so long on my work computer and Safari on my iPhone that I’ve never given much thought to other options.

But when the opportunity came up to go to the company’s latest Opera Browser Days event earlier this year, I was certainly intrigued, and not just at the prospect of a beautiful Euro excursion. During that trip, I got to learn a lot more about Opera as a whole, and after using the browser over the past three months, I’ve come to really love its flexibility and customization options.

In particular, I appreciate just how useful Opera is for my workflow. Before I get any further, I should preface everything by acknowledging just how much I hate having more than a few tabs open. It’s a sense of clutter that is messy, disorganized and often has me wasting time trying to sift through it all. It’s been a huge pet peeve of mine going back to my days in retail with coworkers who would leave tabs they no longer needed open. It just irks me.

But at the same time, having a bunch of tabs open at once is pretty necessary for news and feature writing, both for reference and creating backlinks. That’s especially true for something like my weekly Streaming in Canada column, as I’m constantly checking our monthly round-ups for each streaming service. Additionally, I regularly have to have our various social media platforms open (like Facebook and Bluesky) to share our stories, which only adds to the tab mess.

That’s where Opera’s Tab Islands becomes so handy, allowing me to create groups (“Islands”) of tabs that can be minimized for a cleaner, streamlined carousel. Normally, I’d be closing and reopening each tab as needed to avoid the clutter, which is tedious. Admittedly, I only recently learned that Chrome also has its version of Islands, “tab groups,” and I feel dumb for taking so long to realize that.

But Opera’s other features, in conjunction with the Islands, helps it really stand out for me. For one, you can assign little emojis to each tab for further organization and ease of access, like putting a musical note onto the YouTube tab I regularly have open for background music. You can also customize the icon of pages you’ve marked as Favourites, which likewise makes them more quickly identifiable.

The biggest advantage for me, though, is the shortcuts. On the left sidebar, there are dedicated spots for popular apps like Instagram, X (Twitter), Slack, Bluesky, Discord and Spotify. This is perfect for my particular situation because I can basically have these shortcuts direct to my personal channels, like my own social media accounts vs. the MobileSyrup ones, as well as Discord. While I do wish I could add a few more of my regular services, especially YouTube, the presets do cover most of the big ones. Overall, it’s a great way to delineate between work and pleasure, especially if I’m on a lunch break or out of work hours.

What’s more, there’s a dedicated Personal News button below these apps in which you can add your favourite publications. Naturally, this is helpful both as a journalist keeping up with the news, as well as a general member of the public following both global developments and his own interests. Again, this helps take away clutter from the main tab space by putting it in its own neat and tidy feed tucked away underneath the Personal News shortcut. I do wish there were more options for entertainment sites, given my love of games and film, but you can add a lot of mainstream publications for regular news, at least.

It should also be noted that this sidebar also has a dedicated tab for Aria, Opera’s AI assistant. During Browser Days, Opera even said it’s “gone farther than any other browser in terms of integrating AI” into the browsing experience. This includes features like asking it to search for hotels in a city between a given date range, page context (i.e. give a one-sentence synopsis of a celebrity’s biography) or tab commands (ex. “close all Wikipedia tabs”). That could certainly be useful for some, although I’m not really someone who uses AI tools.

Opera’s other browser options

I’d also be remiss not to mention that Opera has a few other browser options beyond this ubiquitous, eponymous one, depending on the platform you’re using. For one, there’s Opera Air, which is focused on user well-being and mindfulness. This includes features like regular reminders to take breaks, a “gratitude journal” to encourage you to focus on positive feelings (coming in the future) and “healthy work habits” like breathing exercises and posture resetting. This all definitely seems neat for those who are into the health and wellness space, but it’s admittedly not for me.

There’s also an Opera Mobile on Android and iOS, which, like its name suggests, is optimized for smartphones and tablets. Naturally, this is also pretty big on AI, using it to offer suggestions for quick queries related to things like recipes, games similar to Pokémon Go or shopping items like a bedroom table. Like the main Opera browser, this also offers a free built-in VPN service, AI tab management and more. While I haven’t used Opera Mobile since I don’t need anything fancy on my phone, it looks to be a solid option.

And finally, there’s Opera GX, which has the same core features of the main Opera browser but adds many options for gamers. As someone who avidly plays games, this would naturally be the most relevant to me, although I don’t (yet) have a gaming PC to benefit from it. That said, it’s certainly got a lot of tantalizing features. First, there are 9,000-plus mods that have been created by users to allow you to add flourishes like animated wallpapers and themes, different “clickety-clack” keyboard sounds and shaders. In a demo, we saw everything from Comic Sans text font and midnight FX shaders for a fun riff on “dark mode” to an official Cyberpunk 2077 theme that adds sleek hacker visuals across the UI and even an audio mode that adds minutes of silence broken up by the occasional falling metal pipe. (Because why not?)

On top of that, GX has a streaming mode to automatically boost video quality and prioritizes resources for the tab that’s streaming a game over others you have open, integration with apps like Discord and Bluesky (with GeForce Now to come) and an integrated resource manager so you can limit how much RAM and CPU are being used. PC gamers love customization options, of course, and GX appears to be a good fit. Hopefully, I’ll get the chance to properly try it out soon, should I get a dedicated gaming PC.

Closing thoughts

All in all, Opera has quite a few options, which is always nice to see. While many of them aren’t really suited for me, the breadth here is undeniably better for consumers. There’s something for everyone there, and in my case, that’s absolutely the main Opera browser thanks to its suite of customization options. As someone who’s a bit OCD about tabs and multitasking, Opera’s organizational tools help me compartmentalize everything in remarkably helpful ways, and it’s become my default browser accordingly.

You can download Opera for free.

Update: 22/08/2025 at 6:57 p.m. ET — Clarified that the gratitude journal feature in Opera Air isn’t yet available publicly.