Vivaldi's latest film will appeal to anyone who has already left their seat when a website has automatically started playing loud video. Vivaldi 2.7, available today, lets you disable tabs before they're seen, so you can be sure nothing starts screaming while browsing.
The new feature, simply called "Mute Tab", is found in the audio settings under "Settings> Tabs> Tab Features".
The default option here is "Read all audio", which allows all open tabs to make as much noise as they want, but you can also choose to limit the sound. active audio in current tab or even completely cut all tabs.
To switch to silent mode on the fly, you can right-click on any tab and select the "Mute other tabs" option (ideal if you're currently watching a video and that you don't want to be interrupted by loud ads). You can also use the keyboard shortcut F2 on Windows or + E on MacOS, type "silence" and then choose from the available options.
Make yours
Vivaldi is highly customizable and each user can tailor the browser to their preferences, which makes user profiles extremely important. Each profile can have its own look, favorites, extensions, speed dials (quick shortcuts to your favorite sites), and more.
With Vivaldi 2.7, users can now create shortcuts to their own profiles, saving them from having to open the browser and then toggle. This is a small update, but that could avoid a lot of problems on shared computers.
There are also a few other additions. While many browsers are phasing out Flash, Vivaldi continues to keep it active for sites that have not yet switched to HTML5 for interactive elements. You can find the Flash extension in Settings> Web Pages> Plugins'.
(Image credit: Vivaldi 2.7)
Finally, the browser now has an additional status bar that tells you specifically what happens while loading a page: "Request for processing", "Waiting", "Registration" or "Establish a secure connection". This is not just a small point of interest, it can also help you see where the problem could be if a page is paused.