Vivaldi, Yea or Nay?

I just read an opinion piece on a tech company blog. I have a general rule not to do that. Corpo blogs are biased, thinly veiled ads that are too quick to jump the gun with: “And that’s why we built [crapware]”, without justification.

I gave this blog a chance because the author Bruce Lawson is a legend. We met once, lovely chap. Bruce signs off saying the line.

And this is why Vivaldi takes a stand: we’re keeping browsing human.

“A.I.” browsers: the price of admission is too high - Bruce Lawson

Regardless, the rest of the post spoke to my anti-AI vibes, or possibly brainwashed me, so I decided to install and trial Vivaldi browser. This is an unsolicited review. I’m not being paid. Not yet, I can send an invoice if Vivaldi wants to reach out?

Installing Vivaldi

The macOS Vivaldi installer begins with an end user license agreement (EULA).

I read the EULA and supplementary privacy policy. They’re respectably short, but can be modified “at any time” — so that was a waste of my time.

I was happy to see the privacy policy suggest that most data sharing features, like crash logs and search suggestions, are turned off by default. Google’s safe browsing API is on by default, which is fairly standard for browsers.

Upon opening Vivaldi, macOS warns me about downloading apps from the internet. The fact that I’m even given an ‘Open’ option, and not have to dig through security settings for a hidden override, tells me Vivaldi has coughed up the annual $99 Apple Tax.

Little Snitch firewall asked me to rule on a series of outbound connections including:

• mimir2.vivaldi.com
• clients2.google.com

The first I assume is “anonymized” telemetry covered in the privacy policy.

Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message.

Vivaldi privacy policy

The others are presumably related to the safe browsing thing. I’m sure Google can be trusted with whatever bytes they’re receiving? Later I’ll configure my firewall to allow all HTTP connections, for obvious reasons.

Configuring Vivaldi

Once Vivaldi is finally open I’m greeted with a welcome screen and setup wizard. I skip the option for a Vivaldi account (nice try). I skip the option to import bookmarks.

Only Safari and Firefox are presented as options. I use neither. And it’s not clear which Firefox it has detected. I have full-fat, ESR, and other derivatives lying around. The browsers I actively use are Orion by Kagi and Ungoogled Chromium.

Thankfully, I’m not a power user. I have no bookmarks to import so I skip this step too. What? There’s nothing wrong with living a bookmarkless life. Try it.

On the next slide I have three options:

1. No Blocking (pre-selected)
2. Block Trackers
3. Block Trackers and Ads

This appears to be my first Vivaldi bug. I’m presented with the same option twice.

I chose option three. If you don’t like that, blame Big Tech. I continue on, choosing a theme (system default: dark), choosing tabs location (the way god intended: top), and I’m done.

First port of call is to confirm in the privacy settings whether or not the privacy policy was lying. It wasn’t. However, there was no mention of DNS in the policy. Google’s DNS service is toggled on by default. Hmm, off it goes. My firewall would block it anyway.

I am however delighted to find that Google is not the default search engine. Startpage search will do before I configure Kagi. First I have to debloat the mess. I channel my inner Kondō and delete everything that does not spark joy.

I deleted everything.

I visit the settings pages, which are extensive, and delete everything else I can find.

This is where I find my second first Vivaldi bug.

Bing cannot be deleted and there is no error message as to why pressing “Delete” fails. I solved this by setting Kagi search and replaced Bing as the default for images.

This was refreshingly simple. Take note Apple, stick your phoney privacy theatre up your anti-consumerism. Any fanboys care to explain why Safari restricts search engine choice?

After fiddling around with various preferences, I discovered another bug. My advanced search engine settings were lost after a restart. This was fixed by manually adding Kagi again without bootstrapping from the “Add Search Engine…” context menu.

That solved the problem. But in testing the search, I noticed peculiar results.

What is this “Direct Match” tag? I’ve never visited that page and I deleted all default bookmarks. Vivaldi’s documentation is suspiciously verbose yet fails to explain. I shrugged and disabled “Direct Match” in the settings.

Exploring Vivaldi

After finishing my initial setup I feel pretty good with Vivaldi. There are a lot of cool features. As a Proton customer I like that Proton VPN is built-in.

Vivaldi, like all browsers, comes with a lot of bloat and questionable defaults. To its credit it’s probably one of the easier browsers to clean up.

I was disappointed that Vivaldi’s “Workspaces” are just glorified tab groups. I was hoping for cookie isolation. My ideal setup would allow clean separation of work and play. I’m forced to login to all manner of evil — Google, Microsoft, Slack etc — for work. Firefox multi-account containers is the best solution I’ve used. Chromium profiles with their own windows and extensions is a chore.

Syncing Vivaldi

I skipped the offer of an account earlier but I now learn Vivaldi sync is encrypted. Real encryption, not Apple’s fake back-doored encryption. Some metadata is exposed but even Proton can’t avoid that. This is enough to persuade me to try Vivaldi on iOS.

First I need an account.

Signing up requires a username, email address, and password. For accounts like this I use a random generator for all three fields.

Newsletter is opt-in; nice to see no deceptive patterns…

…Oh dear. I’m signed up to a second newsletter against my wishes. At least they don’t hide it. I wonder, had I registered via the browser panel and not the website, would I have seen this? Red flag number one, but I’ll continue.

Update: the newsletter situation gets worse (update below).

On my iPhone I open the App Store and search for “vivaldi browser”.

I’m reminded that Apple values profit over security. This example isn’t so bad, I’ve seen malware boosted by Apple before. I’m unsure if a “Powerful We…” is what I need right now, so I visit vivaldi.com and use the download link to be safe.

I configured both desktop and mobile apps to sync only settings, history, and tabs. It didn’t backfill my history but new activity syncs immediately, faster than I can switch devices.

My Kagi search settings synced but were not automatically enabled.

I’m delighted to see my old friend Bing return! Undeletable? In trying to delete Bing it synced back to desktop. So I deleted Bing from desktop Vivaldi, again, which synced to iOS and finally purged the virus. I’m curious what will happen if I install Vivaldi on a third device?

Keeping Vivaldi

It’s been less than 24 hours but so far I like Vivaldi. I’ll use it instead of Orion and Ungoogled Chromium as my browser for the foreseeable future. I’d prefer to use Orion because I’m bought into Kagi but the browser is hilarously buggy (still better than Safari).

Vivaldi doesn’t have the best privacy but I have Mullvad browser installed if I’m up to no good. If Vivaldi remains anti-slopware I’m sold. It’s a “Yea” for now.

I’ll report back here if any notable issues arise.

Update (Saturday 15 Nov)

The Microsoft virus is back!

My iPhone restarted and I noticed syncing on iOS was disabled. After signing back in I checked other settings and sure enough Bing was back on iOS. I checked on desktop and wouldn’t you know, Bing! I deleted it again. It’s gone for now.

My joy for Vivaldi drops further when I checked my email.

Despite explicitly opting out twice I find a newsletter in my inbox. I follow the unsubscribe link and sure enough I find checked boxes. Seriously, Vivaldi?

Update (Monday 17 Nov)

Day four of Vivaldi and the browser has started to nag me.

There’s a “Tabs” tab in the top-right that has an annoying glow. If I click it I find an annoying “Suggestion”. I have yet to find an option to permanently disable this.

On mobile I’m nagged for feedback.

I’ll allow free software one of these in recent memory. If I can remember the last time, it’s an instant uninstall. I register my disappointment citing the newsletter issue.

These issues are relatively minor but they add up.

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