Let's define what I want to say right away. The only reason I writing here is to share my 3 years user experience. An extremely frustrating user experience. GX has become just awful: a couple of useful functions in a heap of absolutely unnecessary junk, as if the browser was builded according to the 10-year-old's desires (from those who choose components for PC depending on how they glow). Gamers are not the ones, who light everything with RGB, gamers are the ones, who are used to hotkeys, fast decision making, having the one clear way to do technical things, and to good UI/UX. And sometimes "good UI/UX" means asceticism and minimalism.
Decent features:
1) A sidebar with "workspaces" that work as tab containers abstracted from each other, which allow you to organize real workspaces just with "save tabs from a previous session" setting enabled. (Aaand no, it's not. After 115 update, all tabs opened in separate workspaces move to first one on browser closing. Bravo, devs, I'm not even going to comment on this. Nor will I comment on my desire to continue using a browser with 1,700 tabs casualy shuffled);
2) An adblocker embedded on top of chromium (which sometimes doesn't work with proxies and DoH);
3) The address bar connected with the search bar. Hints when searching from it include tabs from the history, what can be quite convenient;
4) The "panic button", not in the form it presented in, but in the form of some important tab quick access button (why should I come up with myself how to work with the function? Used it to quickly check my mail);
5) GX Control, when it works for some unholy reasons.
6) Synchronization of bookmarks and browser settings between devices via an opera account (the same sync that is available with almost any chromium browser). Opportunity to view a list of tabs opened on another logged-in device (this is proudly called "tab synchronization", although it is no different from bookmarks);
7) Hotkeys settings for many things (except for the things for which there is no such setting, e.g. there are hotkeys for moving to a specific workspace, but there are no hotkeys for moving to the next/previous one; there are hotkeys for moving to the next/previous tab inside the workspace, but there are no hotkeys for moving the tab into another space directly or opening the "move tab" context window);
8) The standard browser UI was pleasant to see before update. Won't comment on new one. Just give you an example of working with "cool looking" settings - searching for specific settings by keywords doesn't return you the settings themselves, It returns whole groups, somewhere inside of which there is a setting you need. Great job, lmao.
What about the "junk" part?
• Mods are just browser themes named with a word "like in games". However, don't provide any functionality, unlike mods in games.
• Sounds and music in the browser. No comments. When someone wants to listen to music, they go and turn on normal music there, where people usually listen to music, and certainly not the music embedded in the browser. Sounds for actions, according to UX teachings, are needed when the user reads the action with them. Here we are talking about a browser where the user has no distractions and his only task is to watch what he clicks.
• Profiles. Their functionality is limited to 4 settings checkboxes, which don't really change anything. Are needed for... Used for... Okay, I can't even think of a use for them. In total, here we have: an incognito mode disguised as a profile setting, a mode with browser sounds turned off (which are turned off with one toggle switch in the settings), a mode with browser tabs sound turned off (a browser sound channel mute button disguised as a profile setting, lol) and a performance mode (yeah, performance mode for weak devices in the browser that take disk space with... music. I don't realy know, is the stupidity of this idea really so unobvious that it needs to be explained? There is, at least, opera mini, which combines the performance of performance mode (really that simple!) and the lack of the need to download a full-sized browser.)
• The "Dark theme for all pages" function works in a way that would be better if it didn't work in any way. Have you ever heard of "Color the black in grey, and the grey in grey, and in 'de magic ray you will get a mentally unhealthy user, who will never be the same"? No, cause i just made it up. At least here is the visible effort.
• 1000 and 1 express panel (new tab screen) settings. Awesome. Let me just remind you that "browsers" are used for "browsing" web pages hosted on the global network, and not for looking at express panel (suspect that devs just forgot about this). All I need from a "new tab" is the opportunity to navigate from it to the page I need. I can do this through the address bar, through the search engine in the address bar, and through bookmarks. Why, in the name of nine hells, duplicate it all on this garbage panel? To spend 2 years improving it instead of fixing bugs, adding real functionality, and working with browser performance? (Yes.) Or to report to investors with a beautiful picture? (...)
• Rude ARGB color settings overwriting, aka GX Lights. Why, if all the brands represented have their own flexible settings? Btw, it breaks the Logitech G HUB in some cursed way and neither Opera nor Logitech have fixed this for over a year now, lol.
• Mediaplayer with support for major services only. In a world where every major music service has own application with an amazing amount of convenient functions for musics listening (where, let me remind you, do people go when they want to listen to music (not to the browser music)), which can also collapse into a system tray and which also has a separate audio output channel, independent of all other sources? Well... Think again.
• Pinboards. So, we have browser themes (which we call mods), we have browser colors (which we call themes), oh the wrong topic... So, we have static bookmarks (which we call bookmarks and which sync), we have dynamic bookmarks (which we call tab synchronization and which sync). Oh, great idea, let's add another static bookmarks (which we'll call Pinboards and which will sync)! Umm, maybe not? Or maybe this is a cool extension of the bookmarks functionality? If so, I'm sorry to inform you, but the bookmarks are in another place. Or maybe it's an attempt to imitate Figma? If so, I'm sorry to inform you, but it's abortive attempt.
• Crypto Wallet. Who would ever trust a cryptowallet embedded in a browser? Well, guys, information security exists.
• RGX, which makes even the most blurred videos... also grainy.
• GX Control, when it doesn't work. (What? I couldn't even figure out any pattern.)
• Browser games. No really, browser games (that no one has ever run.) While we live in 2025, opera devs live in 2008 or in 2108 (or they are just trying to convince investors who have never seen real games of their involvement in the gamedev, but shh. I have seen couple of good ones there - just let them go somewhere else. As an indie i just brrrr from this. I would agree that someone might like it, but that someone is not me or other 99% of humanity. Regardless of that, GX games are still somewhere nearby for some godless reasons.)
• "Panic button", one scene, no rights reserved
- It is made for those who watch, hihihi, special videos, hihi, so that if mom comes in, thay could save their honor!
- Well done, but can I go already?
- And with the latest release, the long-awaited feature of replacing the browser history with a fake one after 14 days of inactivity has arrived! Because, you know, haha, yes, well, you know, ahahah, yes, you all know, XD, we're such a naughty boys, hihi! After all, we all are degenerates and can't press ctrl+shift+n.
Well, It's stupid, but now you can understand what you have to deal with when it comes to this browser. It's just vulgar, putting these jokes in the master-release. You have discord chats for that.
• There are a couple more smalls: restrictions on the choice of search engines, a small number of specialized extensions, cutting out some useful functions, rarely released fixes, AI working not for you, but for itself. And we also don't have tab islands :)
And that's it. Literally the entire browser consists of this mess. It's like the colorful fortnite customization combined with a snake game. To make a long story short, the only case in the world in which it would be worth paying attention to the GX browser again is if Opera separated the branch with GX for normal people from the branch with garbage for ADHD kids. Now I'm leaving this dump. For those like me can only suggest trying the standard Opera for PC, it seems to have some of the above useful features (and tab islands), or Firefox.
