Vivaldi 7.3 for desktop now available with Proton VPN integration

Earlier this month, Vivaldi 7.2 for desktop arrived with faster page loading, a tweaked address bar, keyboard shortcut overriding, account reordering in Vivaldi Mail, and several other improvements. Now, Vivaldi 7.3 is here with a single — yet major — change worth mentioning: Proton VPN integration. To take advantage of this excellent Swiss software product, users need to log in to their accounts, so those who didn't get a Vivaldi account yet should do so. Other than entering the Vivaldi account credentials, there are no downloads or payments required.

According to Vivaldi Technologies co-founder and CEO, Jon von Tetzchner, 

"Bringing together Proton VPN and Vivaldi provides a superior online experience, combining Proton’s best-in-class VPN with Vivaldi’s power, advanced customization, and uncompromising stance on user control."

He also highlighted that both Vivaldi and Proton VPN are European products and have nothing in common with the personal data practices of software that comes from Silicon Valley and China. This change to Vivaldi is advertised as one step forward in the effort to keep the web "open, secure, and democratic" without any upfront or hidden costs.

Sadly, the VPN comes with some limitations, which can be unlocked by purchasing one of the subscription plans provided by Proton. While sporting auto connect and WebRTC leak protection, as well as notifications, Vivaldi's Proton VPN component lacks two useful features, namely Secure Core, which provides additional protection, and Split tunnelling, which allows the user to disable VPN connections for certain websites. On the bright side, it should be noted that anonymous usage statistics, while not containing the IP address, are not being shared by default. The only information shared by Vivaldi's VPN consists of anonymous crash reports, but those worried about their privacy can just disable it.

Same as the previous versions, Vivaldi 7.3.3635.4 is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. This is a minor update that has just been released to address three issues that were discovered since yesterday's launch of the desktop version (labeled 7.3.3635.2) with Proton VPN in tow.