Vivaldi vs Google Chrome

Since Vivaldi is built on Chromium, the same base as Chrome (among other browsers) is built on, it was possible for Vivaldi developers to allow Chrome extensions to run in their browser.

Tabs can be grouped under a single tab to easily keep track of all open webpages.

Vivaldi has a lot of features and customizability. Far more then most (perhaps all) other browses, and many to list them all individuality as separate pros.

A feature called Quick Commands (accessed via Ctrl + Q) allows quickly getting to settings, history, open tabs, bookmarks with incremental search.

It's possible to change and add keyboard shortcuts for basically all commands. It also has single key shortcuts to execute actions with one click.

Vivaldi is available on Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS, so it covers the most used PC operating systems.

A notes panel allows to save notes from webpages and can include screenshots for reference and have tags and organized in folders to help manage them. Thumbnails are too small and Notes do not have separate page in settings, but it should, there are a lot of things to improve.

Web Panels allow for easy access to any site from the side panel. They are useful for reading two websites side by side or for chatting (i.e. Facebook) and surfing at the same time. Panels can be hidden when not in use.

You can add as many search engines as you like. For example you can set up one for YouTube, one for Wikipedia, or whatever you want: you need only the URL of the search and it can be used from the URL bar (by prefixing it's nickname, yt for YouTube for example).

Everything can be synced with a Vivaldi account. Though there's still no mobile version, you can sync between computers and OSes.

The order you toggle, open, close or clone tabs can be modified to match a workflow that best works for you. For example you can choose tabs to toggle in recent order so you can go back and forth between the last most useful tabs without needing to change their position on the tab bar.

You can change tab bar position to top, bottom left or right.

Integrated mouse gestures. Fully configurable as of Vivaldi 1.2 (snapshot available now). Allows for navigating the web, switching tabs, closing windows, opening settings etc. with a flick of the mouse.

There's even an option to automatically transition from light to dark based on the time of day.

Vivaldi has an excellent bookmarks system. Bookmarks can be easily accessible via Speed Dial, side-bar, bookmarks bar, quick commands. No more messy bookmarks bar is needed and location bar suggestion is improved thus!

Vivaldi can grab a picture of the whole webpage or part of it and saves it automatically inside a note or as a file in your disk, or in your elected directory. But I have problems with images of full windows shown on monitor (using X Window System in GNU/Linux). Here I use system XWindow screenshots.

View graphically your most visited pages on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis.

A setting lets you prevent closing fixed tabs so you don't close anything important by accident.

It is so faster and safer.

For you programmers out there: Since Vivaldi uses JavaScript, React, Node.js, Browserify and multiple npm packages to build the browser, it can be customized with ease by anyone who knows HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

It saves oversights many options and functions implemented in Vivaldi. E.g. see CON "No option to open saved tab stack as... tab stack!"

Vivaldi has a built-in reader mode so you can remove all the clutter in news pages and read only the content, you can also customise the reader mode, like font size, style and colours.

In comparison, on Chrome you will not see the address bar, only on ChromeOS when your mouse is on the top of the screen.

Vivaldi has a built-in blocker that allows you to select between blocking just trackers or both trackers and ads. With customizable blocking list sources, good performance, and support for all the standard blocker list features you find in ad blocker extensions (with more to come), you might not need an ad blocker extension at all.
This also comes in handy on Android, where Chromium/Vivaldi doesn't support extensions.

A feature called "fast forward" puts a dedicated button before the address bar. It takes you to the next page of a multi-page article, forum thread, or search results, without having to hunt for the link.

A built-in setting called "Broadcast IP" will stop the IP leaking with WebRTC when disabled.

Respects Privacy.

Unlike most modern browsers (but like most browsers of yesteryear), Vivaldi gives you a dialog box when an new version comes out; it doesn't just update silently in the background. The dialog box tells you about the changes that have been made, and lets you chose when you want to update.

Most portable version cannot be added as default apps but Vivaldi offers that option and it comes with updater too.

The optional feature for controling various functions (e.g. opening, closing and switching of tabs) by pressing just a single key rather than two turns out to be an extremely convenient extra.

Relieve your eyes or save space on the screen – your choice!

Just bookmark a page and you can henceforth open it by a shortname of your choosing.

Only with a VPN that offers TOR connectivity.

Vivaldi can change the colors across the browser and has the option to change the color automatically depending on the page. Also, page loading animations are available in the address bar.

Unlike most modern browsers (but like most browsers of yesteryear), Vivaldi has a status bar. But the status bar is optional, you can turn it off (in the settings) if you don't want it. Vivaldi also has a side-panel, which again, can be turned off.

By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.

For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox.

Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers those developers are more likely to use Chrome for their tests, and can spend more time making improvements over investigating underlying causes of issues.

There are far more available on this browser than any other, and that may matter for some.

According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times. Works very well with the uBlock Origin adblocker.

Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version.

You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts.

Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome can keep its fast performance regardless of how many extensions are installed. With more than 10 extensions Firefox gets slower and slower in a geometric progression rate. Google Chrome doesn't care how many extensions the user has installed - 3 or 133 it still performs great.

Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...)

It uses the blink rendering engine which has removed many legacy khtml/webkit code to be much lighter and faster.

Unlike those various unofficial Chromium builds, there is only one distributor, so all Chrome releases follow the same standards.

Every tab runs as their own process, so if one crashes or becomes unresponsive, the whole browser isn't affected.

Chrome uses online services to collect our data and improve our browser experience. But this also means it spies on you.

Chromium is open source, except the proprietary media codecs like AAC, H.264, MP3 and Adobe Flash, that can't be legally open-sourced.

As of March 2015, Chrome is the most popular browser on the internet, with a 43.9% - 63.7% market share, Its rendering engine Blink is also the most used rendering engine and used in many products including: Opera, Vivaldi, Qt, Brave, Steam or Electron meaning most developers will be testing their sites against this browser to ensure compatibility.

Whilst Chrome is based on the open source browser Chromium, Google reviews this code and build on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open source model whilst having the resources, support and investment of a major company.

Includes support for many licensed unfree media formats.

Google Chrome comes with its own flashplayer and the most common multimedia codecs so you don't have to worry that they are outdated nor do you need to install them as a third party package.