Easy reading in Opera for Android 56

February 6th, 2020

Hello everyone,

We are thrilled to announce the release of version 56 of Opera for Android. This is the first update to our mobile browser in the new decade and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we do.

In the new version of Opera for Android, we have first included a range of smaller but useful improvements. We have also enhanced the reader mode for general web pages based upon your feedback and requests. With the new updates in the reader mode, you can now focus more easily on the content you like to read on your mobile phone and forget about distractions or additional clutter on your browser screen.

Easy reading with reader mode

To simplify reading on less than mobile-friendly (or otherwise complicated) pages, we have added general support for reader mode. The toggle-switch for the new mode can be found in the address bar and will be displayed on pages that are able to be converted into the simplified format.

Configurable address bar action button

In the updated reader mode, the reload button residing in the address bar has been moved to the ⋮ menu, but you can still reload by swiping down from the top of the web page . For those of you that are less interested in reader mode, you can now either restore the position of the reload button, or put any other menu action directly into the address bar for quick access. You can configure this in Settings > Appearance. You can also quickly reach the setting by long pressing the shortcut button.

Resurrect your recently closed tabs

Previous versions of the tab gallery have included a menu entry to restore the last tab that was closed. This operation could be repeated multiple times to access older tabs. However, for a tab that you accidentally closed a while ago, this was not efficient. We have now changed the restoration of closed tabs so that it’s displayed as a chronological list, making it much easier to find the tab you would like to reopen.

Other small tweaks

As usual, a large number of improvements have gone into this release, many too small to deserve their own paragraph in a short blog post but which together contribute to a better browsing experience.

Happy browsing!