What made you switch to Vivaldi full time?

pafflick

As for me, I can't remember that moment exactly, but I was using it at least since TP3. But I haven't made the switch until one of the post-1.0 releases, I believe - sometime back in 2016 when I decided it's stable enough to use it as my daily driver. I haven't looked back for another browser since.

WildEnte

the promise of Mail coming to Vivaldi

stardepp

I was very unhappy with Firefox when Mozilla changed the type of add-ons from Legacy to Webextension. This caused many useful add-ons to disappear. Either the add-on developers could not or did not want to update their add-ons.

In the summer of 2018, I first read about Vivaldi Browser on the German tech blog golem.de.

Curious, I downloaded Vivaldi.

It took me half a year to change my main browser from Firefox to Vivaldi, so overwhelmed was I by the many settings in Vivaldi.

In September 2018, I joined the Vivaldi forum.

I received often, professional and friendly help there.

Since then, I have been a proud Vivaldi user.

Bild Text

treego

The integration of mail, newsfeeds, and calendar in addition to the best customization capabilities of any browser out there with respect to keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, web panels, tab management, etc.

Linu74

I was looking for a replacement for the old Opera browser.
In the beginning, I still had Thunderbird as an email client, until Vivaldi was ready with the email integration.

Linu74

Pathduck

I remember downloading the first TP in 2015, and while I really liked the first impression and what Vivaldi was promising would come, I felt it wasn't quite "there" yet for my needs.

My first newbie post[1] is from 2015, and looking at the history there was a 2-year jump to 2017, so I'm guessing it was around then I started using it more. Maybe not as the primary browser - I was still using Firefox at the time - but the timeline of 2017 matches when FF Quantum was released, and a lot of the extensions I used broke. It was time to fully move away from Firefox in 2018.

What initially got me into the browser was the ability to customise key bindings, a must-have in any software to get used effectively. And of course the spatial navigation just like in old Opera

I remember initially loving the theme colour changing and the selection of themes. "Blueprint" is still one of my favorite themes, it really looks like something an engineer would use These days I just use the same "Vivaldi dark" theme from version 1, it just looks great.

daily driver

When did this expression turn into common usage instead of "primary browser" or similar? It's a very strange expression, can never get used to seeing it...

My "daily driver" is several strong cups of coffee

[1] Looking at the list of suggestions/extensions I came with there, almost all of them have been implemented in Vivaldi, apart from Opera's brilliant per-site cookie settings.

Thot

I think it was the first Technical Preview in 2015. Since then I have not used any other browser. With Firefox I was up to version 4 or so and slowly, with every new release, got the feeling that browsers are becoming more and more Non-Browsers, although you could still browse with them somehow in some way. Safari on Mac either didn’t got better. It just wasn't a pleasure anymore.

Even the UI of these so called Browsers got worse and worser in my feeling, working with them was kind of impossible. Then finally, the technical preview arose, I had to load it right away and was happy. Finally a browser that is a browser in my sense of understandig and all in the good memory of the old Opera Browser. I have to thank Jon, the Team, the developers, everybody making Vivaldi, and formerly Good-Olde-Opera, possible.

greybeard

I saw a post/news release one day about testers wanted for the Alpha release. As an old user of Opera I immediately downloaded the Alpha. It had its issues but with Jon's name behind it I couldn't not try it. I've always had Vivaldi on my computers since then.
When you are housebound and use the internet thing as much as I do you need the proper tool. Opera ver. <13 could do everything I needed but I saw I'd eventually need a replacement.
Jon and the Vivaldi Team have done a great job with the evolution of Vivaldi. I've stuck with it as my daily browser since before the first TP. Of course I have backup browsers but rarely use them.
My bride is used to FF so I keep it on and updated. but never use it myself.

Catweazle

In the summer of 2016 I came across an article about Vivaldi in a technical publication and decided to give it a try. I liked it so much from the first moment that I used it as my main browser, and from registering. I also found a great and friendly community and since then it has not even remotely crossed my mind to leave it until today.

The other browsers I have, FF and some others which I was changing, with different engines (currently I'm using the Whale browser, which has certain similarities with Vivaldi in its functions and customize options, nice, but not very well translated in some points, it's from a South Korean company), I use it solely as a backup and for test reasons.

With these I have already known the vast majority of browsers that exist, some of these also very good browsers, but I can say that there is none that is better as Vivaldi, at least for me.

Pesala

I started using Vivaldi as my default browser in 2015 with the launch of the first technical preview, but still needed Opera 12.18 for my email.

I finally switched fully to Vivaldi with the release of Vivaldi Mail Technical Preview.

I keep Opera 12.18 installed, and launch it occasionally as a backup of important emails, but there is only one other task that I cannot do in Vivaldi yet — easily edit the source code of local host HTML files using my preferred text editor (Notepad2).

Looking back on my old posts, I see that I was almost ready to make the switch to Vivaldi as my default in February 2015.

RiveDroite

I've been using it since at least 2017, but I don't recall how I discovered it, just that I really liked what it offered. It's still my favourite browser!

ingolftopf

Thank you for the many interesting contributions here.
I'm sure there will be more.

pafflick

@WildEnte Did you make the switch upon learning about the Vivaldi Mail client, or only after it was released (as beta or after MCF 1.0)?

pafflick

@Pathduck I'm not sure about the "daily driver" expressions' etymology - I guess, I just got used to seeing/hearing it in similar context, so it felt natural for me to use it.

pafflick

@ingolftopf Waiting for yours.

ugly

Pretty much the release of the technical preview was enough.

All it had to do was be better than the new Opera. Not a high bar.

I think I was using it in parallel with Opera 12 for a while. Not exactly sure when I switched completely. But it was fairly early on. I think the ultimate switch to full-time Vivaldi was just a matter of more pages breaking with Opera 12 and Vivaldi becoming a more stable and complete package. I don' think there wasn't a particular feature that pushed me over the edge.

As for Vivaldi mail (M3), I'm still mainly using Opera 12 for mail. I switched a few email accounts over. I think I could switch, but I'm hoping for a few things to be ironed out (ideally importing of labels and duplicated emails not being imported).

elizaldc

I switched over to Vivaldi this past year from Opera and overall I just really the features and UI. Being able stack tabs and use the Web Panel for whatever websites I want has been really awesome. I enjoy that the company values privacy and that it has no interest in promoting crypto currencies as well.

ingolftopf

@elizaldc Hello and welcome here!
Have fun with the browser and in the forum.