Howdy,

Many of you already know Opera GX, the world’s first browser designed for all of us who love PC gaming. So you’ll be happy to learn that we are releasing a major new feature to GX which is completely unknown to other browsers: adaptive background music. This unique music feature is bringing the immersive sound experience you get from gaming into the realm of web browsing.

A small trip down memory lane for background: Opera GX initially launched in 2019, happily incorporating sound effects composed by Ruben Rincón and the Berlinist band. You might know of them from their Bafta-nominated soundtrack to Gris. One year later, the same team has lent their considerable talents to the new dynamic background music in Opera GX.

The dynamic background music is an ambient downtempo that will immerse you further in your gaming-themed browser. Actively browsing, clicking and typing intensifies the music, for example, while slowly scrolling and reading will take the music down a notch. This dynamic reaction to your activity blends into the background when you’re in focus-mode, so you often don’t notice it until you miss it.

We are excited to finally reveal the entire concept we’ve had in mind: We wanted to give our browser the immersive sound experience known from games, where a perfectly-composed soundtrack lets you focus more, forget about any worries and boosts your overall experience by adapting to the task at hand. I believe we have succeeded.

Anytime you need a break, or want to listen to something else, the background music and all browser sound effects can be switched off at will in the Browser sounds section in Settings.

Bringing the GX Composer Award to Game Music Festival 2020

We see this initial background music as just the beginning, and we’re looking to expand it a great deal in the future. Just as we love different game genres, people are moved by different types of music. That’s why we want to give more game score composers the opportunity to present their music to millions of Opera GX users around the globe.

This year we are partnering with the international Game Music Festival and sponsoring its annual GMF 2020 High Score Competition. This competition will bring music score composers into the spotlight where they can not only win cash prizes, but also have their music featured in Opera GX by winning the GX Composer 2020 title. Look forward to it on September 16, 2020.

Twitter is now built into the Opera GX sidebar

Everyone who’s already using Twitch, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram in the Opera GX sidebar will be happy with our new addition. GX’s set of integrated messengers has now been extended with Twitter, adopted from the main Opera browser. This brings yet one more way to keep up with friends and stay on top of trends without leaving your browser.

More noteworthy updates

While dynamic music, a game score competition and Twitter are the big news, there are a few more recent updates to Opera GX that are worth noting.

The Weather widget has been adopted to the GX homepage from our main Opera browser. You’ll first see weather from our home city of Oslo, but can set your own city by clicking on it.

Workspaces has a bunch of new icons for customization, and when you click links you can choose to open them in a specific workspace. Workspaces also now has a dedicated section in settings for creating your own keyboard shortcuts. Follow these steps to create them.

The Search in Tabs feature (Ctrl+Space) now searches page content, as well as title and URL, and lets you search for recently-closed tabs.

Searching for items on your History page (Ctrl+H) is now easier as well, since we have added date filtering to the search options. Once you have your search results, you can also click the new Delete History Below button, which will delete the items from your search only, without deleting the rest of your history.

Whew! That’s quite a lot of good news, and there will definitely be more to come. We will update you then and in the meantime – Happy browsing!

*Opera GX is available on MacOs and Windows

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