Opera’s new browser might save you from doomscrolling

Norway-based Opera has announced a new browser, Opera Air, with a focus on mindfulness and mental wellbeing. It includes break reminders, breathing exercises, and a suite of relaxing soundscapes to help users both focus and de-stress.

“The web is beautiful but it can be chaotic and overwhelming,” says Mohamed Salah, Opera’s senior director of product. “We decided to look at science-backed ways to help our users navigate it in a way that makes them feel and function better.”

Air features a semi-transparent design and a floating sidebar for its mindfulness features. When you need to work, the Boosts feature offers music, ambient sounds, and binaural beats — where slightly different frequencies are played in each ear, which creates a perceived third frequency in the brain and is believed to help influence relaxation or focus. Soundscapes can be set to play from 15 minutes up to forever, and can be paused from the sidebar at any time.

The Break reminder is an icon made up of three lines in the sidebar that gray out while you work — you can customize the duration — reminding you to take a break once the icon is fully faded. Air can help at that point too, with breathing exercises, neck stretches, “full body scans,” and guided meditations, which last up to 15 minutes.

Air joins the default Opera browser and its gaming-focused Opera GX in the lineup. Like those, it includes a built-in ad blocker and free VPN, plus access to the ChatGPT-powered Aria AI assistant. Air is available to download for free now on Mac or Windows.