Feedback: Opera Air — UI Praise and Feature Requests

I love Opera Air’s sleek, calming UI — the interface feels smooth and responsive. At the same time, several missing usability and customization features are keeping me from switching from Firefox to Opera as my default browser. I’m sharing concrete issues and requests in hopes the team will prioritize them.

Main issues

• Address bar icons are not customizable — there’s no way to remove, hide, or reorder icons in the address bar.
• Full-screen UI doesn’t reveal on hover — when browsing in full-screen, the sidebar, tab bar, and address bar stay hidden instead of appearing on hover; this breaks immersive workflows for people who still need quick access to controls.
• Sidebar rigidity — you cannot add an arbitrary URL as a sidebar app or pin custom web apps easily, which makes the sidebar almost unusable for many workflows.
• No true multi-profile or container support — workspaces exist but they don’t isolate settings, extensions, or sidebar apps like separate profiles or Firefox-style containers would.
• Workspaces aren’t isolated — switching workspace doesn’t separate user settings or extensions, so it doesn’t replace profiles.
• Slightly painful contrast with Yandex — it’s ironic that Yandex, which looks like it borrowed Opera’s interface, sometimes offers more practical sidebar and app-pinning features than Opera itself.

Suggested improvements

• Allow address bar icon customization — let users hide, remove, or reorder icons.
• Add a “reveal UI in full-screen” option — make sidebar, tab bar, and address bar appear on hover when enabled.
• Let users add arbitrary URLs as sidebar apps — support pinning, naming, and managing custom web apps in the sidebar.
• Implement real profiles or container support — provide true profile isolation (settings, extensions, cookies) or at least per-workspace containers like Firefox’s Multi-Account Containers.
• Make workspaces isolated — allow each workspace to maintain its own extensions, sidebar apps, and settings.
• Improve sidebar UX — add drag-to-pin, resizable panes, and clearer management for sidebar items.
• Offer a “Productivity Mode” toggle — let users temporarily minimize mindfulness/meditation UI and switch to a productivity-focused layout.

Why this matters

Opera Air’s UI and recent performance improvements are excellent, but small usability gaps (sidebar flexibility, profiles, toolbar customization) are what keep power users from switching. Fixing these issues would make Opera Air not just calming, but genuinely productive for everyday and power-user workflows.

Closing

I’d love to use Opera Air as my default browser — I really like the interface. For now I’ll try other browsers for a few months but I’ll keep checking back. I hope one day, I'd be able to make myself convinced to make opera air as my default browser.