The Vivaldi web browser has carved out a niche over the past few years, appealing to people who want a feature-packed web browser (and more recently, email with their browser). The Android app is now receiving a major update.

Vivaldi 5.7 is rolling out now on Android, and it's a significant upgrade, especially with media playback. The browser now allows you to continue playing audio from any site when the browser is in the background. Chrome, Edge, and other browsers already support background audio playback, but not when the site specifically opts out of the behavior -- something Vivaldi can now ignore. Vivaldi's blog post specifically mentions YouTube playback as supported.

You may have to enable the new background audio feature yourself, though. The toggle can be found under Settings > General > Allow background audio playback. Vivaldi also now blocks auto-playing videos by default, which is configurable from Settings > Site settings.

This release has a few design improvements, too. The entire interface can now be scaled up or down in size, independent of Android's own system scaling. That might be helpful on some tablets or Chromebooks where the factory scaling isn't quite right, but Vivaldi says it's most useful for cars -- the browser is currently being used on some high-end cars through Android Automotive.

Vivaldi 5.7 for Android is rolling out now on the Google Play Store. It's also available through the UptoDown and Huawei app stores, as well as direct APK download. The desktop browser is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Source: Vivaldi