Hide and sleek: Latest Vivaldi release can tuck its UI away until summoned

New toggle strips away browser chrome if you want

Browser maker Vivaldi has opened up a new front in the browser wars by making itself disappear.

It's a simple concept – hit the auto-hide icon (or use the keyboard shortcut) and all the browser fluff disappears. Move the mouse pointer to the edges of the window, and it comes back. It's rather like the Windows function that automatically hides the taskbar, which frees a little screen real estate until the cursor makes the taskbar slither back into view.

Full-screen browsing is frequently used to hide the more prosaic origins of kiosk applications, but Vivaldi's approach makes the process more suited to desktop users. A spokesperson told The Register: "It works in both full screen and restored/normal window." There's also a setting to limit the feature to full-screen mode – another checkbox in Vivaldi's ever-expanding settings arsenal.

The spokesperson told us: "This feature has been developed to give our users maximum real estate for control, without losing the controls they would like to have available."

There are obviously some security implications, not least the fact that the URL is completely hidden, which means that it might not always be clear which website is loaded. Not all of the expected bits disappear either. Scrollbars, for example, depend on the site being viewed.

It's certainly a neat feature and the most notable of the 7.9 release, yet it won't be to everybody's taste. Then again, like the rest of the browser's options, it doesn't have to be used and isn't pushed into the user's face.

Vivaldi said: "As always, we're shipping with No AI. No tracking. No BS. Just the web, edge to edge. Or Vivaldi to Vivaldi." We see what you did there.

The release also includes a new option, "Open Link as Tiled Follower Tab," which opens a tiled page alongside the current tab. Any further links open in the follower tab. There's also the ability to open the mail composer in its own window, along with several other email tweaks.

Vivaldi uses the Chromium rendering engine, but what surrounds it is up to the Norway and Iceland-based company. Rather than force AI onto users or collect customer data for commercial purposes, Vivaldi – which claims four million users – is focusing on features aimed at improving the browsing experience. Those who don't want them can simply ignore them. ®