Vivaldi 8.0: our biggest design overhaul, ever | Vivaldi Browser

More than thirteen years in, and I am still as excited about building this browser as I was on day one. Maybe more.

That excitement comes from a genuine belief that the people who use Vivaldi deserve a browser that takes them seriously. We respect your time, your privacy, your preferences, your intelligence. Every release we ship is another expression of that belief.

Vivaldi 8.0 is the biggest expression of that idea we have shipped in years. A new design direction that makes the browser feel more alive and more unified than any version before it.

In other words: there is more control, more capability, more choice. And a brand new look.

A new look for a new era

With 8.0, Vivaldi has a new look. We call it “Unified”.

We have approached the Vivaldi interface less as a collection of components, and more as a layered system. Previously, those layers (tabs, toolbars, panels and content) have had subtle separations. This was useful, but also a bit fragmented. With Unified, those boundaries are removed.

Vivaldi Theme

Soria Moria Theme

Sunset Forest Theme

Zen Theme

All toolbars now live on a single, continuous surface: a Unified frame that wraps the entire browser. Instead of stacked regions, everything is composed within the same visual plane. That shift makes the interface feel more cohesive and easier to read. Alignment becomes more precise, spacing more intentional, and interaction more direct, because elements no longer sit in isolated layers.

When you pick a theme, it flows through everything. A dark theme is dark, all the way through. A warm theme carries that warmth into every corner. All elements of the browser belong together in a way that immediately feels… well … Unified.

It also changes how themes work.

With a single surface, your theme can flow across the entire window. Backgrounds are no longer confined; they can extend from the tab bar through panels and edges without interruption. Wallpapers feel less like decoration and more like part of the environment, especially when combined with translucency and blur. From a system perspective, this reduces complexity. Fewer layers, fewer exceptions and a more consistent foundation to build on.

This isn’t about making the browser look simpler. It’s about making the structure behind it more coherent. This makes everything you see feel like part of the same system.

You can see the new UI’s possibilities with our new default themes, such as Zen, Soria Moria, Sunset Forest and Kawaii Clouds, and our updated light and dark themes. If you can’t find something that hits the right spot for default, there are more than 7000 to choose from at themes.vivaldi.net. And if you have built a custom theme you love, you’re free to decide if you want the new look, or keep your own (Settings →Themes → Editor → Coloring mode). Of course; this is Vivaldi.

Start exactly where you need to be

One of the things that makes Vivaldi special is also one of the things that can feel like a lot on day one: the sheer range of settings you can configure. If you have been using Vivaldi for years, you have your setup exactly as you want it and you would not trade it for anything. If you are brand new, figuring out where to start can be a real question.

Vivaldi 8.0 answers it with six preset layouts, available right from onboarding (and from Settings → Appearance → Layout whenever you feel like a change). Each one is a thoughtfully curated starting point.

Simple gives you a clean, focused experience: tabs on top, nothing in the way, everything ready to go. It is Vivaldi in its purest form and it is already more capable than anything the mainstream browsers will offer.

Classic is the Vivaldi you know and love. Toolbar, panels, all the controls in their natural places, now wearing the new Unified look. This is home for a lot of you, and it is as good as it has ever been.

Vertical Right is similar to our classic look, but for people who prefer to have their tabs on the right. You’ll find the URL field on top, and panels on the left, as usual.

Vertical Left puts your tabs and address bar on the left side of the screen. Once you try this on a wide monitor, it tends to become permanent. It uses your horizontal screen space in ways that a top tab bar simply cannot. With Panels available on hover from the right side of your screen, it changes how browsing feels.

Auto Hide is built for users who want the web to fill their entire screen. Your toolbar, tab bar, panel, and address bar step aside while you read, watch, or work, and reappear the moment your cursor reaches for any edge of the screen. It is edge to edge content with full Vivaldi capability sitting right behind it, and it is a way of experiencing the web that the other browsers have not figured out.

Bottom moves your tab bar and address bar to the bottom of the screen. Your eye travels down naturally as you read, and your navigation is already there...