Vivaldi Ships Version 7.9 with Full UI Auto-hide, Betting Screen Space Over AI Features
Every browser maker on the planet is racing to stuff AI into your toolbar. Chrome has Gemini. Edge has Copilot. The Browser Company killed its own product to build an AI that watches your tabs. And then there's Vivaldi, the Norwegian browser that just shipped version 7.9 with a feature that does the exact opposite: it makes the entire browser disappear. One keyboard shortcut, and every pixel of chrome is gone. What they said about AI in their release notes is even more striking.
Vivaldi released version 7.9 of its desktop browser on Wednesday, introducing a feature called UI Auto-hide that strips the entire browser interface from view while users read, watch, or work. The update also adds Follower Tab, a split-view browsing mode that keeps a source page anchored while links open beside it, and a set of improvements to the browser's built-in email client.
"UI Auto-hide lets me immerse myself in content in ways the Metaverse could only dream of," Haakon Rølmann, Vivaldi's head of marketing and communication, said in a press release. "Like most of the features we have launched, we are sure this will see knockoffs."
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