I've written at length about Vivaldi in the past. It's my favorite web browser for multiple reasons, but I've also had many issues with it, and at one point I even tried switching browsers, but I ended up coming back after a couple of months. I still love too much of what Vivaldi does, but I can't completely overlook the problems I've had with it.

So consider this an open letter to the Vivaldi team: I love this browser, but I really want to see these things improved, fixed, or added. Here are five of the biggest problems I have with Vivaldi.

More features for mobile

Vivaldi on desktop is so much more powerful

One request that may be a bit outlandish but I'd love to see anyway is to make Vivaldi on mobile have more of the features that it does on desktop. There's a lot I could pick here, like extension support or the deep UI customization options, but for me, there are a couple of things I want to focus on: Feeds and email.

I'm going to talk more about the feeds feature in a second, but I'd love to the Vivaldi RSS feed reader on my phone so I don't need a separate app to keep track of that. It would fit right in, since most of the time you're using an RSS feed reader to open the full article when it matters anyway.

Mail is more on the crazy request side since I don't think a lot of people want their phone's browser and email apps to be one and the same, but it works really well for me on desktop, so I would definitely be down for it. Every email app I've used on mobile has had something I don't love about it, so it would be interesting to see Vivaldi's take.

While we're at it, Vivaldi on mobile is also missing things like the to-do list that the desktop version has, so that should make the jump too (though I actually don't use it myself).

Ask me to sign in during setup

It wastes my time

As a reviewer, I have to set up Vivaldi on multiple PCs, and it gets pretty tiring to do it every single time. But the worst part is that, each time I do it, I then have to sing in to my Vivaldi account separately after setting up, and this has an annoying side effect. Vivaldi is automatically set up with a few bookmarks that are seemingly promotions and partnerships Vivaldi has made. I have no interest in these bookmarks, but they're always there.

What's worse is that, because I didn't sign up, Vivaldi ends up adding the bookmarks to my account after I do sign in. Every time I set up a new PC, these bookmarks get added to my account, and it gets very frustrating. I wish vivaldi asked me to sign in during the setup process and carried over my synced data and only my synced data after I finish setting up. I keep having to delete bookmarks I don't want and it's very frustrating.

Let me import RSS feeds more quickly

It's a hassle to set up every time

Another annoyance I have with Vivaldi when I have to set it up on a new computer is that, despite many things syncing across devices, some of them don't and in the case of RSS feeds, it takes a long time to set up. Staying on top of news is (unsurprisingly) a big part of my job, so having RSS feeds ready is very important, so it's annoying that when I set up Vivaldi on a new PC, I need to manually navigate to every URL I want to add to my list and subscribe to the RSS feed again. It actually limits how many RSS feeds I follow at any given time because I can't be bothered to set everything up every single time.

Any good RSS feed reader needs an option to import a list of feeds, and I have an OPML file ready to go. Unfortunately, Vivaldi doesn't let me import OPML files, so I have to do it all manually each time. I really want this to be easier, so whether it's OPML or a simple CSV file, I just want the option to import my RSS feeds faster.

Sync all my settings

Actually, this is even better

Importing my RSS feeds would be a great solution to start with, but actually, we can do even better. Rather than rely on manual solutions like that, why doesn't Vivaldi just sync all my settings across devices. It's weird that it can sync my entire browser history, passwords, and extensions in a flash, but there are multiple things I need to do manually each time.

For starters, my email accounts. I usually add four accounts to Vivaldi, and I have to do it all manually. Now, obviously Vivaldi probably shouldn't store my login credentials, but it can store the email accounts I've added and just ask me to enter the password for each one during setup, rather than having everything be manual. Similarly, my RSS feeds should just sync across devices, so I don't have to do it manually each and every time. And also, marking articles as read should sync between devices, too, so I know exactly what I still need to catch up on.

But it goes further than that. Vivaldi could save my content blocking settings. While I generally have trackers blocked by default, I always add a couple of exceptions for XDA, and I don't know why I have to do it manually each time. I also wish my UI changes got saved and synced across devices, like the toolbar icons I removed or added or any websites I added to the sidebar. It would just make things so much smoother.

Faster tab syncing

It's not very useful as it is

Finally, I wish Vivaldi did a better job at syncing my tabs across devices. Don't get me wrong, the feature works, but there's always a delay long enough to make it not that useful for me.Sometimes I'll be looking at a page on my phone as I approach my PC, and I wish I could just keep going on my computer, but that tab isn't there yet. There's no way to force syncing, either, so it kind of sucks.

It would be great if tabs could be synced between devices instantly and I could just hop on from one device to another without having to think about it. If that's not possible, maybe a button that lets me manually send a tab to another device would be a good replacement. I just wish cross-device experiences were a bit better.

Vivaldi could be the perfect browser for me

Even with all the frustrations, Vivaldi remains my favorite browser by far, and the team has been teasing some big news for later this week, so I'm very excited to see them. Hopefully some of the things I mentioned here are among those improvements, but if not, I hope they'll be incorporated in future updates. Regardless, I'll keep using Vivaldi, and if you're looking to switch browsers, I highly recommend giving it a look.