The New Opera Browser Is Designed to Break Your Doom Scrolling Habit
There’s a lot going on right now. And sometimes it can feel a little overwhelming. Especially when you are (perhaps constantly) online. Much of your work and personal life happens online. And sometimes it’s really easy to get caught up in doomscrolling and forget that sometimes you need to touch the grass. Opera Air is a new browser that hopes and tries to save you from all that.
Opera Air has built-in features that remind you to take a break every hour or so, and during the break, prompt you to work with your breathing, meditate, or do some relaxation exercises. There’s also a special background music feature that plays custom binaural beats to help boost your productivity or calm you down a bit.
Light and spacious browser
Opera Air is a visually lightweight browser with transparent UI elements and no UI bloat. It’s built on Chromium, so all your extensions will work fine. Plus, Opera’s default features are still here, including Workspaces, a built-in ad blocker, and a free VPN.
The main interface is a simple vertical bar shaped like a floating pill, where you’ll find a Boost button for background music and a Take a Break button for quick access to meditations. Additionally, there are shortcuts for the Aria AI assistant in Opera, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger that you can remove.
Breathing work and meditation during breaks
Opera Air will remind you to take a break after 60 minutes of use, but you can set it to happen every 45 minutes or every 180 minutes. The Take a Break feature can be accessed at any time from the vertical sidebar on the Start page or by using the Command + K keyboard shortcut.
Opera has done an impressive job of creating breathing exercises, neck stretches, and meditations. There’s a male and female voice, and several recordings of varying lengths, so you can do either a quick three-minute breathing exercise or a 13-minute body scan.
I especially liked the design of the breathwork interface. It features an interactive bubble for inhaling and exhaling, and describes the most commonly used breathing techniques, such as box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, and stress-relieving breathing. If you’re interested, I’ve written about the benefits of breathwork in our detailed guide .
The same goes for meditation. You could do a quick mindfulness meditation or something that focuses on inner peace. It is also possible to perform a body scan.
In the Neck Exercises section, your camera tracks your movements and guides you through a 3D model.
Overall, Opera’s built-in meditation tools and breathing exercises are great for beginners.
Binaural beats are a lot of fun.
While testing the Opera Air browser, I liked the Boosts feature the most. It uses binaural beats, which are an auditory illusion created when two slightly different frequencies are played in each ear. Of course, this works best with headphones. But the tracks that Opera Air has prepared for concentration and relaxation are quite good and exciting. As I write this, I’m using Energized Focus. You can also start a 30-minute or 45-minute session here to serve as a reminder to take a break when the music ends.
Built-in features have an added benefit
There’s no shortage of breathing tutorials on YouTube (I’m currently partial to the coherence breathing technique ). And we’ve already talked about the best meditation apps . You’ll also find extensions that will help you focus by blocking distractions , and again, YouTube is full of audio tracks that will help you focus.
All of these resources mean that you can handle your meditation on your own, but if you’re like me, you won’t always remember or prioritize at the right time. Having a browser specifically designed for this that gives you a reminder every 45 minutes, has built-in focus music, and can help you breathe and practice mindfulness meditation can be quite helpful. Even if the browser manages to force you to check itself once a day, it’s still much better than the alternative, which is constant panic and no breaks. Not to mention, all of these features are free on Opera Air, but meditation apps can sometimes cost $10 a month.
Opera Air is available in early access on Windows and Mac, so you can try it out for yourself in just a few clicks.