Vivaldi has shipped another thoughtful update to its mobile apps. The company pushed Vivaldi 7.6 to iPhone, iPad and Android earlier this month, and while the headline for desktop users was a customizable tab bar, the mobile release quietly focuses on two things people actually use on phones and tablets: reading and managing tabs/bookmarks — plus a round of stability work that should make the browser feel steadier on older devices.
The biggest addition for iOS and iPadOS is a proper Reader View. Think of it as the “take the noise away” button: Reader View strips ads, sidebars and intrusive layout cruft, then lets you tune theme (light, dark, sepia, high-contrast), font, brightness and text size so an article looks the way you like it. For people who read longform on their phones (or skim stories on the go), that little toggle can transform a cramped web page into something you’d happily finish on the commute.

Vivaldi also added link previews on long-press: hold a hyperlink and you get a small, live snapshot of the target page so you can decide whether to open it. It’s a small UX win but one that reduces context-switching and accidental taps — handy when you’re juggling tabs on an iPad or squeezing in reading between meetings.

Power users have always liked Vivaldi because it doesn’t force you into one way of doing things. With 7.6 on iOS, you can now add custom search engines, assign short nicknames and pick defaults — the same kind of flexibility desktop users have enjoyed for years. If you prefer Startpage, DuckDuckGo alternatives, or a specialised site search, Vivaldi lets you wire it in without hacks. For people who use their phone as much for research as for browsing, that’s a genuine productivity improvement.

Vivaldi’s take on tab management is the Tab Stack: group related tabs together, collapse them, and treat the group as a single workspace. On iOS, the Tab Switcher now includes a dedicated Tab Stacks pane so your stacks are visible and tappable at a glance instead of buried in a thumbnail grid. If you tend to collect tabs (we won’t judge), this makes locating a tab or whole stack quicker and less fiddly.

Android’s 7.6 update is quieter but practical. The Save Bookmark dialog now includes a “create folder” button, so you can organize bookmarks into folders without leaving the flow of saving a page — small, but it saves time if you frequently bookmark recipes, read-later articles, or project-specific resources.

More importantly for everyday use, Vivaldi reports a batch of stability and performance fixes for Android: fewer crashes related to multiple tabs, smoother scrolling on long pages, improved sync reliability, reduced battery use when Vivaldi runs in the background, and UI tweaks for dark mode and tablet layouts. Those fixes are the kind of under-the-hood work that doesn’t headline well but is noticed when your browser stops stalling on heavy pages.
Shortly after the initial roll-out, Vivaldi issued a minor Android update that includes crash fixes and an upgrade to a newer Chromium build. If you track stability on older phones (or distribute Vivaldi in small teams), this kind of follow-up matters — it’s the difference between “oh that was annoying” and “works fine now.”
Vivaldi 7.6 isn’t flashy, but it’s precisely the sort of incremental update that rewards its existing audience: better reading tools, clever touches to tame tab chaos, and pragmatic fixes that make the app feel less like an experiment and more like a dependable daily driver. If you’re already invested in Vivaldi’s customization ethos, this release tightens a few loose screws and makes mobile browsing a little more pleasant. If you’re curious but cautious, the stability follow-ups on Android suggest it’s safe to try without a lot of risk.
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