Why I Haven't Left Vivaldi Yet

So when it comes to web browsers, I've tried them all. Brave, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Waterfox, you name it. Even some of the ones that are kind of more like minimal, cute browser and things like that. I've spent a significant amount of time in every single browser you can think of, and I always come back to the exact same one, and that is Vivaldi. Now I have made Several videos about why I use Vivaldi, but they've been quite some time ago. And what I want to do today is talk about why I remain such a fan of the browser that a lot of people seem to despise. And there are legitimate complaints when it comes to Vivaldi, like having too many features. Actually, that's like the only one that I hear. People say it's bloated. And I just, I don't get it. I really, really don't. It's like the people who say System B is bloated. Sure, maybe, yeah, but I don't care. I really, truly don't care. So what I want to do today is talk about five or six of the reasons why I think that Vivaldi is the best browser and why it remains the best browser for me, at least. So, the first one I think is a big one. Now, it's going to be a little ironic and maybe a little hypocritical given the fact that I just made a video a little while ago talking about... Why I don't think AI is that bad and why I use AI. But when it comes to my browser, I don't want it to have anything to do with AI unless I put the AI in it. So I have like a cloud extension that I could put in it. I don't. That's a choice that I make. I don't want AI in my browser. And one of the things that I really like about Vivaldi is that they have a very clear stance on artificial intelligence slash LLMs. They don't want to put it in there unless there's a very good reason to do so and they're very clear on what those reasons might end up being and right now they haven't come across those reasons. I like that. I like that they're not just shoving it in just because it's a marketing term. Like, oh, we have an AI tool. I don't care about your AI tool. Brave has one. It's Leo. Maybe you use Leo. That's fine. I don't care if that's what you want to do. But I want a browser that... Takes my interest seriously and is cognizant of the idea that yes, maybe Vivaldi is too full of features, but we don't, that doesn't mean we can just add more until it topples over and we don't need to put them in willy nilly for no reason. And AI is one of those. Every browser has to have one because of Chrome. Vivaldi doesn't think that way. So that's one of my reasons. And I think that it's probably the least. Important reason on this list, but I wanted to lead with it. So the next one on the list is One that's probably more important to me than most people, but I really enjoy Customizing my browser now. Is it the most customizable browser ever? No Firefox is very customizable if you're willing to get into the CSS and actually do the stuff, right? You can put things wherever you want. There's a lot of different things you can do with the CSS, but it requires you to have the knowledge of either where to find that stuff or how to do it yourself. It's not user-friendly. There's no user interface or graphical user interface I should say. that allows you to do that, at least in stock Firefox. In Vivaldi, however, there is. You can put the tabs on the top. You can put them on the bottom. You can put them on left. You can put them on the right. You can put the address bar at the top or the bottom. You can put the bookmarks on the top or the bottom. The sky's the limit when it comes to the customization of where the UI elements actually reside. And they actually added one not too long ago where it's literally just like hide everything. So if you like the look of cute browser, Where there's no Chrome whatsoever. You can do that with Vivaldi and have all the features of an actual browser. It's really freaking cool. I don't use that as much as I did when it first came out. Because I am still kind of attached to seeing my tabs and stuff. But the idea that you can have just a window of a web page without any Chrome whatsoever. And it's just there. It's really cool. And you can customize these things. One of the things. I'm really weird in this area. Where I like to move things around a bit. It freshens things up. I've talked about the whole reason why I switch themes and wallpapers all the time. The browser is kind of no different. Sometimes I'll have my tabs on the bottom. Sometimes I'll have them on the top. Sometimes I'll have them on the side. Although the sides are a little bit more rare. Because I'm not really used to vertical tabs. And I avoid them. But sometimes I have the... Address bar on the top, sometimes I have it on the bottom, sometimes I don't have one at all. I like switching things up, and because it's so easy and I don't have to go messing around with CSS if I'm in Firefox. It's really cool. So if you like being able to put things wherever you want and you don't want to use either a Firefox fork or get into the Firefox CSS, Vivaldi is a great choice for customization. The next one on the list is workspaces. Now, if you are on Firefox or a Firefox-based browser, you can get workspaces fairly easy with a plugin, but Vivaldi has them built in. And because they're built in, they work better. They just do. The simple tab groups... Of Firefox don't work as well as they could as if they were built in because you don't have the integration with the key bindings and stuff that you need. Now you can still do the key bindings with that plugin. I'm not saying that you can't, but there's a lot of stuff involved that you just can't do with a plugin. So being able to set as many workspaces as you want, being able to create bindings that will send a tab from one workspace to another is really cool. You can do that same thing with tab groups. You can do the same thing with splits. Anything you want. You can send those things to workspaces and you can kind of organize your flow as much as you want. And it's just really, really good. I don't use workspaces as much now as I used to, but I still use them quite extensively. Now, I'm not a tab hoarder like I used to be, so that's the reason why the usage has kind of gone down. But I still like to be able to put, like, my podcast stuff goes in one workspace. My stuff for work goes in one workspace. My main like... This is the place where I'm going to waste time, goes in another workspace, right? So it's really good. To go along with that, and the reason why this is superior to Firefox, is tab stacks. Now... In a traditional browser like Firefox or a regular Chrome-based browser, you have tab stacks. They call them tab groups usually, and that's just where all of the, a group of tabs are put together in some kind of user interface, right? A lot of, a lot of the Chrome-based browsers, and I think Firefox as well, have tab groups where it's kind of like an accordion-based thing up in the tab bar, and that's fine. It's not the way that I like it though. And the reason why... Vivaldi's superior is because of tab stacks and this is basically the idea where instead of having that accordion thing for a tab group you have two layers of tabs you have the header tab which is like the group label which is just acts as a tab like a like a master tab and and below that in an actual second UI layer you have all the tabs that are in the group it's a tab stack and you can put that within a workspace so basically what Vivaldi allows you to do is it allows you to Organize your tabs not only by workspace, so by like general topic, but also by group in a way that other browsers just don't. And that's a phenomenal thing. I use tab stacks way more actually than I use workspaces these days. Just the ability. So right now, for example, I'm working on a video. It may already be out. I don't even know. It's a video about the top five password managers that are open source, right? And I have a whole bunch of tabs that are regarding the research for that video. And basically what I've done is I put them all in a tab stack or a tab group, if you will. They are all just there. That way they don't take up my entire workspace. It just, they're all part of that one group. And they can stay open as long as they want without taking up space. And when I'm working in there, I know all of the tabs that are for that project are right there. It's really good. So tab stacks are the next one on the list. That's the net, the... Second to last one is a stable interface. Now, see, the thing about Vivaldi, it gets a bad rap because it has all these features. And if you're of the more minimal inclined part of the species, that's fine. Maybe Vivaldi's not for you. But one of the things that I really like about Vivaldi is that the user interface has stayed basically the same. For the last five or six years, there hasn't been a ton of change. Firefox changes their UI all the time. Like, they just did another one where it's all rounded corners. Like, okay, fine, but I don't need a redesign of my browser every, you know, 18 months. It just, it's not necessary. Now, it doesn't mean that Vivaldi's not adding things every once in a while. They do. They have different features that come out, but they don't, they don't, things just stay where they are. And that's great. And when they do change something, it is usually fairly subtle. It's not like a major redesign. It just stays the same. That means that the features that I like stay the same. It means that the. They don't break things by trying to improve them all the time when it comes to the at least the user interface, right? And I think that that's great. It's one of the my favorite parts of it. It's just the it's my browser I can put it where things where I want it and I know that an update is not going to break that so that's great And the last one is probably the one that is gonna piss a lot of people off is that it's not Firefox It's not Firefox guys. I don't like Firefox and it's not really that I don't like the browser the browsers fine It does have, like, if you're using something like PyWall or Matagen or something like that, you can update it automatically, which Vivaldi lacks, and, you know, that's a downside of Vivaldi, of course, but, at least for me, but I don't care for Mozilla, like, I have so many problems, and none of them are political, it's all about the way they run their organization that just doesn't suit me, like, they're... They have their nose, this is going to sound horrible, but I'm going to say it out loud anyways. They have their noses shoved so far up Google's ass, you know, they just follow them around like every single feature that Chrome comes out with, Firefox duplicates as closely as possible. AI, anything else. And it's not just really Google or Chrome that they're doing it to. If Opera comes out with a good feature. Chrome is, or Firefox is there for like six months later trying to copy a VPN or something like that. And that doesn't bug me so much as it doesn't come along with features that are their own. Like, where are their ideas? Putting out a new user interface every 18 months or two years or so doesn't make, those aren't ideas. That's just a new coat of paint. Over the top of a rotting structure, in my opinion. I want them to come up with something that's not just pulled from somewhere else. And I think that that's the problem I have with them. I can't use Firefox and expect it to ever get better. I can expect it to change. I can expect things to break. I can do all that. But I can't expect there to be a feature that comes out that says, this is Firefox and nobody else has this. It's just the truth. And I like, like I don't need new features all the time, but I would like my browser to offer me something that other browsers didn't have to bring me in. Like there's, like there's nothing to bring me there, right? And just stick around. And Mozilla is incapable of coming up with something that is like that. So one of the reasons why I use Vivaldi is because it's not Firefox. So there you go. So those are the reasons why I think Vivaldi is still my favorite web browser and probably will continue to be. I just like the way they handle their browser. Now, again, I'm not trying to really convince you to go out and use my browser. I think that a lot of people, if they tried it, especially if they do a lot of work with a bunch of tabs, being able to organize those in a certain way is really good. And it's done better on Vivaldi than any other browser. But browsers are very personal things. And there's, you know, you use what you what suits your workflow the best. And that's that's the way that it should be. So that's it for this video. If you have comments on any of this stuff, you can leave those in the comment section below. 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