We shouldn't have to be clearing this, tweaking this, turning around 4 times and scratching our elbow while saying a mantra, etc etc to get a built in VPN working...especially when the mobile app opera vpn works considerably better.

Same here, in fact it never has worked except for about 10 seconds a few versions ago. ISP's are not losing any sleep over Opera's VPN, methinks.

leoc g - are you forever gonna be a 'come what may fanboy'? Check the number of posts, mine included, about no VPN ....VPN is dire on the Opera desktop as far as usability goes.

You are lucky. the hopeless thing has never worked with my 'new' - I still use the good, old Opera - Opera. With baited breath I tried this latest update..and......no VPN, as you say, won't even connect.

Interestingly, the mobile app VPN works - or it did until recently when ISP's effortlessly block it, and you must keep switching every few minutes to the various ISP's offered - but the desktop one is a dead duck? Back to Vivaldi for me until this actually works.

After sticking with the old glory days Opera browser 12.15, I decided enough time had passed since the first chrome based opera to perhaps get it working good.

What I found is a browser that is a slug vis a vis my old 12.15, but at least I have bookmarks, and it seemed to have imported them ok, albeit in icons that are not immediately clear what bookmark it is until opening them. Still, the UI was nice and crisp. Maybe, I thought to myself, this is gonna work out fine and dandy, after all.

Nontheless, I had really downloaded it to try the VPN, which works so well on my phone and tablet. Oh dear. It switches off within 2 seconds of enabling it, and nothing loads in any case, as I stare at the amber VPN icon that was blue for 1.75 seconds.

Great start. Not. Still, I decided to persevere, and despite already spending considerably more time faffing about in settings (why not just set the damm thing to work best as a default, btw?) than I had to do with the Android version of VPN, and googling like mad, I came upon a post suggesting using WebRC leak prevent, although the recommended settings for this in Opera settings are greyed out and not clickable. Great. Bringing up the WebRTC leak prevent extension options, and there are only three options...nowhere is there the 'use any suitable network interface (recommended)' showing greyed out in Opera settings.

Why should it it be SO hard to enable VPN? Do I need - as one google post suggested to go back a Opera release to get working VPN? This problem seems to have occured to some since the first Opera browser release version that had VPN way back in spring of this year. For now, it's back to Vivaldi for the (few) pages my trusty old Opera 12.15 has problems with.

How is the latest Opera version panning out? I confess, I still use 12.7 and Vivaldi. Has Opera caught up, yet? Any change in Opera manager team responsible for the post 12.7 shambles? I simply cannot believe all that was down to the devs.

Just use Chrome? latest Opera is based on it. Unfortunately.

Please, please, please...listen...read (just look at google entries re opera-mini) and sort downloads out. Looking back on google, people have complained about the poor download capability of Opera Mini. It is high time this was sorted.....as a priority, for goodness sakes.

Please, please, please.....why on earth make anything over 15mb downloadable visible to Theresa May and the other quasi-fascist western government snoopers by sending that direct? Bizarre. Ludicrous. and very annoying. We are not talking enabling massive files to be proxied, but 15mb?! Seriously?! Make it sub 200mb, by all means to deter serious piracy, perhaps....and just perhaps, but...really....jeesh.

Our only hope is perhaps Vivaldi can develop a android browser; such is the attention opera mini devs pay their users.

when downloading is fixed, I may try opera mini again.

Nope. It's nothing to do with operator blocking, as opera mini uses european servers that ole Theresa May, bless her, and the snoops at GCHQ can't control.....yet.

Just look at the number of threads regarding inability to download in opera mini, and clearly there is a rabbit off somewhere. Compared to the older versions of opera mini (why oh why do companies release updates that are no where near as good as versions from up to 2 years ago??) displaying images, saving images, downloading images and other stuff is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Such a shame.