Vivaldi 6.5 released with new sessions panel, full history sync, workspaces rules

The Norwegian web browser company Vivaldi Technologies is wrapping up 2023 with a big update for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its latest version, Vivaldi 6.5, comes with several features and changes, including Sessions Panel, Workspaces Rules, improved Notes, and synced open tabs.

Vivaldi 6.5 for desktop brings a freshly-baked Sessions Panel, which has been among the top-requested features, at least since 2018. It's a new side panel that lets you quickly create, manage, and reopen your saved Sessions. You can rename, edit, and search your saved Sessions, as well as, turn on automatic session backup from the bottom of the Sessions Panel.

The company has done some work to improve Vivaldi's cross-device experience. Tabs synced from other devices were previously accessible via the cloud icon on the Tab bar. You can now view synced tabs in the Windows Panel as well and locate them using the Address Field on your current device.

If you use Vivaldi Sync to move your browsing data across devices, the feature now syncs your entire browsing history in addition to bookmarks, settings, passwords, reading lists, etc. All the browsing data synced across your devices is now end-to-end encrypted, starting with the Vivaldi 6.5 update.

Improving on Workspaces, Vivaldi has added some automation and the ability to set rules for your Workspaces. You can go to Settings > Tabs > Workspaces to create new rules. The feature helps you better organize things by automatically moving the tabs to the correct workspace.

For instance, if you're in your travel workspace and click an Amazon link to shop for something, the tab will be moved to your shopping workspace. Apart from that, the built-in Notes tool in the browser lets you add text snippets to a note you created in the past.

To do so, right-click after selecting a text snippet on a web page, then click on the "Append to Note" option. This feature will let you collate related text content from various sources into a single note.

Vivaldi 6.5 for iOS

Speaking of its iOS counterpart, the Vivaldi 6.5 update brings a configurable address bar and tab bar that you can place at the bottom or top of the screen depending on your preference. Adding to that, the browser can now display search suggestions in a reversed order, which is particularly helpful when the address bar is placed at the bottom.

For the unversed, the first iteration of Vivaldi for iPhone and iPad was introduced earlier this year in September. The browser got its first feature update last month, bringing features like tab pinning and search engine nicknames to save time while finding stuff.

On Vivaldi 6.5, the Start Page is more customizable now as you can add custom images as wallpapers to decorate it. It comes with 12 pre-loaded wallpapers that you can find in Settings > Appearance, where you can also pick between dark and light themes.

Vivaldi 6.5 update also brings dynamic accent colours to iOS. The Tab bar background and Status bar background (when the bottom address bar is enabled) will automatically pick the accent colour of the website you are visiting. Vivaldi for iOS is also getting support for full history sync and end-to-end encryption, similar to the desktop version.

You can download Vivaldi 6.5 for Windows, Linux, and macOS from its official website. For iOS, you can head over to Vivaldi's App Store page if you haven't enabled automatic app updates.

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