Opera unveils a new version of its web browser

Just a year ago, Opera officially abandoned its eponymous web browser in favor of Opera One, a new version of Opera completely redesigned and powered by artificial intelligence.

A few days ago, Opera Software, the parent company, unveiled (again!) a new iteration of its web browser, this time with other AI-related improvements, in addition to new features. This new version, identified under the code name Opera One R2, is currently only available in a version intended for developers. However, the publisher plans to deploy this major update a little later this year.

New media controls and proactive tab management

For this next major update of Opera One, its publisher plans to “make multimedia a central point” of its browser. The goal of the operation here is to allow you to control the playback of your music and videos without interrupting your browsing. To do this, Opera One already has a dedicated module in its sidebar that allows you to connect the player of your choice. By hovering over it, you can already easily control your listening on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal or even Amazon Music. Music playback is already automatically paused if you start playing a video, for example. Similarly, a video plays continuously, even if you change tabs. Indeed, Opera automatically opens it in Picture-in-Picture mode with the ability to move the window anywhere on the screen. But the publisher intends to go even further by offering dynamic backgrounds to change the appearance and sound of the browser.

Aria will soon be able to generate images

At the launch of Opera One, Opera presented Aria, its own artificial intelligence that relies on several language models, including those of Google and OpenAI. Via the Composer module, which allows you to enter your prompts, you can ask Aria to generate images, but above all to answer you out loud. The images generated by Aria can be saved directly from the right-click context menu. In addition, you can submit images directly to Aria. This will allow you, for example, to ask it to solve an equation written on a piece of paper, or to identify an object. Finally, you can use Aria to ask it to translate, summarize or extract specific information from a web page.

Redesigned tab management

Opera Software also announced that it had completely redesigned the tab management system. Last year, the firm launched Tab Islands, a system allowing all the tabs on the same site to be grouped together. To complete this system, Opera One will introduce a function allowing you to split the screen in two, to allow you to open and display two tabs simultaneously in the same window.

Finally, finding recently viewed tabs will soon be easier. Opera has provided a function to leave a “trace” each time you view a specific tab among your dozens of open tabs. The last viewed tabs will soon be identified using a small underline that is more or less accentuated. The older the tab, the more the underline will be attenuated.

Opera One R2 is currently only available in the browser’s Developer feed in Early Access. You can download it now by visiting this page . The final version of Opera One R2 will be deployed by the end of this year.