Opera 40 also brings new & improved Battery Saver, built-in RSS Reader, Chromecast support, and a pop-out for web videos

Sep 20, 2016 12:00 GMT  ·  By

Today, Opera Software released Opera 40, the browser's latest stable version, which comes with a bunch of new features that users will surely like.

The biggest addition to this version is the new, free, built-in and no-logs VPN service the browser maker is now providing.

Opera engineers have been testing the VPN service since version 38 of the Developer Edition, and the feature has been subject to criticism, with some people calling it nothing more than a proxy system.

Nevertheless, Opera is the first browser to attempt to provide such a feature to its users, and they can turn the VPN on from the browser's Settings section, under the Privacy & Security tab.

Opera's current VPN service includes only 5 exit nodes in Germany, Canada, the US, Singapore and the Netherlands, but the browser maker has promised more in upcoming releases.

Battery Saver now shows more helpful information

A feature that received improvements is the browser's built-in Battery Saver, added to Opera in version 38 Stable. While in its first version the Battery Saver feature was only a checkbox in the browser's UI, the new Battery Saver dropdown now shows more useful information.

When the Battery Saver is activated, it will show to Opera users the amount of time they have left for Internet browsing, based on their current tab activity and battery level.

Furthermore, the feature now lets users configure a minimum battery level at which the Battery Saver feature turns on automatically, so they won't have to constantly check the laptop's battery level and turn it on themselves.

Opera's improved Battery Saver
Opera's improved Battery Saver

Built-in RSS reader & Chromecast support

But there are more new features. As pre-announced in mid-July, Opera Software has delivered on its promise and added Chromecast support and a built-in RSS reader.

Currently, Opera's built-in Chromecast feature only supports YouTube videos, and requires users to install not one, but two extensions, from the Opera extensions catalog, and then from the Chrome Web Store.

This can be a hassle for non-technical users, and since Google decided to embed the Chromecast extension in Chrome, most users won't probably bother and use that browser instead.

As for the RSS reader, you can access it from the browser's News section, where you can now copy-paste RSS feeds and have them appear as news source widgets.

Since the news source catalog is limited to a few "selected" news sources, the RSS feed support will allow users to actually follow ALL news sources, not just what Opera devs deem acceptable.

Users can pin videos to the screen and scroll down the page

A final feature that is also quite handy and useful is a video pop-out feature that allows users to "pin" videos to the side of the screen as they scroll down through a page, just like on YouTube's mobile app.

The current Opera version is based on Chromium 53.0.2785.101 and includes all the web standard features added to that release, such as support for Shadow DOM v1. More details on this can be found on the Opera developers blog.

Users can get Opera 40 using the browser's built-in update tool, or they can install Opera 40 over their previous version by downloading a fresh copy from Softpedia, for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Opera 40 new features (4 Images)

Opera's new VPN feature
Opera's improved Battery SaverOpera's new built-in RSS reader
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