10 innovative Opera features that lured me away from Chrome

Those mouse gestures truly rocked my world

- ALAINA YEE

Chrome might be the most popular browser around, but it’s not the only one based on Chromium, Google’s open source project. Rival browsers also rely on the same code.

That competition often dangles unique features to tempt users into switching, but Opera (fave.co/3yMZ748) long ago caught my attention with the sheer number of goodies stuffed into its browser. In fact, I abandoned Chrome for years because of Opera. Flexibility, efficiency, privacy—the creators of Opera seemed to know exactly what I wanted.

Even though I’ve since started using Chrome again, Opera still holds a powerful place in my heart. I still use it daily as part of my multi-browser habits, both on desktop and mobile. Why? Here are the top 10 reasons—and I lefta few offthe list to keep this article from spiraling out of control. (For other alternatives, check out our guides to killer Firefox [fave.co/3xz10kt], Edge [fave.co/3tJIdC2], and Vivaldi [fave.co/3QrFw1B] features that might manage to lure you away from Chrome.)

1. MOUSE GESTURES

I actually squeaked in excitement when I first read about Opera’s mouse gestures (fave. co/3v1OYQj). Like keyboard shortcuts, these enable faster navigation while browsing, but they’re even more seamless. You don’t have to take your hand offyour mouse.

With just a click on the right mouse button and one or two small mouse movements, you can zip through the basics: Go back or forward one page, open a new tab, reload the page, close the current tab, open a link in a background tab, or open a link in a new window.