Vivaldi, one of the most interesting Chromium-based alternative browsers out there, has just released a new version with a good set of new features. You can download it right now or upgrade directly to version 2.9 if you’re already using it.

This new release comes focused on offering an improved menu of options, plus greater user control over annoying notifications from some websites, better performance, and other specific improvements for macOS users.

The new menu

Vivaldi users on Linux and Windows can choose from the appearance settings exactly where they want the options menu to be displayed, and with this new version, it is now even more flexible. If you are one of those who prefer to use the mouse for everything, now in the Vivaldi menu you have access to things like web panels, to quickly access the sites that you have added to the Vivaldi sidebar, or, access to the Tab bar in a click to get more screen space.

Now you can also right-click to access the context menu when you are viewing a bookmark that is in the Vivaldi menu. You can even report a bug directly from the help menu.

More control over the permissions requested by websites

Perhaps the most interesting novelty of this version in the new default permission section offered by the browser. You just have to go to Preferences> Websites and look for the permissions section to control them globally.

That is, from there you can decide if you want the websites to ask you before having access to things like your notifications, or to send sounds, or to access your camera and microphone, etc. Or if you want to deny them by default at all. An excellent option to control your privacy, and also to avoid inconvenience and interruptions.

Finally, in Vivaldi they claim to have improved the overall performance of the browser after updating some of its components, so opening and closing tabs should feel better than ever and faster.

And, for macOS users, the good news is that with this version of Vivaldi, the playback of HTML5 videos has been improved, which has been affecting older machines on which they were unable to play videos for some time, it has not been completely solved, but they are progressing.