Browser maker Opera is releasing Opera 64 to the stable channel, offering users improved privacy protections from online tracking and updates to its Snapshot tool.
The browser is shipping with a new privacy setting that allows users to toggle on the Block Trackers feature alongside the existing built-in ad blocker.
Opera, along with other Chromium-based browsers Brave and Vivaldi, still supports ad-blocker extensions despite Google’s Manifest V3 initiative to limit them.
Opera says the tracker blocker can speed up web browsing by almost 20% because web trackers make websites slower to load. After enabling either of the blockers, users can disable them for individual websites, for example, for publishers that require users to disable blockers before they can access content.
Opera is running with the trend among browser makers to attract users by offering better privacy protections. Mozilla, for example, last month enabled its Enhanced Tracking Protection blocker on third-party scripts for all users.
Apple has been beefing up protections against web tracking too with its Intelligent Tracking Prevention technology in Safari.
“Once you’ve looked for a product on a website, that product tends to follow you around to other websites in the form of personalized ads or behavioral tracking,” said Joanna Czajka, product manager of the Opera PC browser.
“We’ve decided to help our users understand and manage this situation by putting them in control of the data they share with websites.”
Opera is using the EasyPrivacy Tracking Protection List for its tracker blocker, which contains a list of known tracking scripts and blocks them. That’s a similar approach to Firefox, which uses Disconnect.
Besides privacy, Opera is also catering to gamers, earlier this year launching Opera GX. The browser lets users minimize its usage of the processor and memory resources to reserve them for games being played or streamed.
Finally, Opera has made some improvements to its Snapshot tool for taking screenshots of websites from the browser. The tool can be launched with Shift+Ctrl+2 and can now save a website directly to PDF or capture the whole page from top to bottom.
The image can also be edited with an improved blurring effect. It also lets users add text in three fonts.
The stable release of Opera 64 is available today for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Credit: Zdnet
