If you're tired of your current web browser, one of our top alternatives is Opera, and it gets a major update on Wednesday with the Opera One R2 release. It brings a slew of new features to the Chromium-based browser that were previously for developers only.
Opera has now integrated Google's Imagen 2 AI image-generation tool into its Aria AI chatbot. Share an image with Aria and ask it to identify what the image shows. Or ask it to make images from existing ones or a text prompt. Open a conversation by pressing Ctrl and then the forward slash key to use up Aria AI within the Opera browser.
Opera One R2 uses your PC's graphics card or CPU with integrated graphics to render new, moving browser themes. Choose from three new themes -- Classic, Aurora, and Midsommar. That last one is named after the annual Scandinavian celebration that occurs on the summer solstice and comes with background music and a pale, pastel look with shades of pink, blue, and purple. Aurora is an aurora borealis-inspired theme with shades of neon green. Or, you can use Opera's color picker to choose the color you want for your browser's visual look.
Opera's latest update brings split-screen tab experiences to the browser, meaning users can have two web pages open next to each other in one window with multiple tabs in each. Sure, you can do this the old-fashioned way on other browsers by manually dragging things around -- or you could keep it all neatly organized within one window.
Opera's also launching "Tab Traces," which means the browser will now show you which five tabs you've viewed most recently. But that'll only kick in if you have more than 30 tabs open, which apparently isn't all that uncommon these days.
Opera also has the ability to group tabs with its existing "Tab Islands" feature, which clusters them together and can reduce the amount of visual clutter on your screen.
If you like pop-out music player windows, you're in luck with Opera One R2. This will work with both music or audio and videos, so you can keep media on in the background and still see it while you browse, work, or study. It also works for Google Meets, and video calls as a pop-out window, like the feature Google recently launched for Chrome.
Unlike Google, Opera believes in ad blockers. It comes with one built-in and says it'll keep supporting third-party V2 browser extensions like uBlock Origin and AdBlock for those looking for additional ad-screening tools.