How to Switch from Chrome to Vivaldi

Vivaldi is the hot, new (well, not that new anymore) browser to make waves on the Internet. You may be tired of Google’s shenanigans and ready to try something new. In this short guide we show you a few things to keep in mind when you decide to switch from Chrome to Vivaldi. Many of these steps should also work well with Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge, as well.

Also read:Vivaldi: Is it Your Next Web Browser?

First up, of course, you’ll need to download Vivaldi, which is a matter of clicking the appropriate button. Once it’s downloaded and installed, you’ll be presented with the start screen.

This is where you can keep all your favorite sites for easy reference and can even subdivide them into folders, which shaves a lot of inconvenience off the browsing experience. Setting up your favorites here is really easy: you can just import them from Chrome (or another browser) without any real hassle.

Import Bookmarks into Vivaldi

With Vivaldi installed, to go to the Bookmarks page, either click on “bookmarks” at the top of the start page, access the menu by clicking the Vivaldi icon at the top left of your screen, or hit Ctrl + B.

From there, click on “Import” at the top right of the page and a dialog box will pop up. Select the browser you were using before this – Chrome in our case – and Vivaldi will automatically import all your bookmarks, passwords and settings. It’s fully automated and doesn’t require you to first export any bookmarks or settings.

All that remains for you now is to sort through all your bookmarks and decide which ones should be on your start page.

Customizing Vivaldi

Your next step is to customize Vivaldi to your liking. You have all kinds of options here, including shifting the address bar, having extra navigation bars to the right or left, or even going completely minimalist and having nothing but the absolute essentials – it’s all up to you. Whatever you end up going with, you’ll need to fiddle with it in the Settings, which you can find under the Vivaldi button on the top left under “tools” and then “Settings.” Alternatively, you could just hit Ctrl + F12.

Customizing Vivaldi Settings

Vivaldi’s settings deserve an article all of their own, but we’ll go over a few of the more interesting ones here really quickly. The first is “Themes,” which allows you to set the theme of the browser. While most of us probably prefer the clinical white look, there are tons of options to choose from, including burgundy and black.

Next up is “Appearance,” which is mostly about where the elements in your window go. You can choose to have new tabs open automatically, for example, or the settings button to the right rather than the left. Really, there are many options here, and you can mess with them to your heart’s content.

Change Search Engine

However, one very important setting to change for most people is the default search engine. As a Chrome user, you’re probably used to Google, but it may be wise to change that to something with a bit more privacy, like DuckDuckGo. In Settings, go to “Search” and change the default to whatever you like or set a hotkey for when you want to use a specific browser.

Conclusion

These are the main things you should know when changing to Vivaldi from Chrome. If you want some general Vivaldi tips, we have a few of those, too. Let us know in the comments if we left anything out you feel is important, and have fun with Vivaldi!

Image credit: Internet browser window in human hands – by DepositPhotos