Chrome introduced an inline PDF viewer on Android starting with Chrome version 132. Initially, from Chrome 132 to 135, users had to manually enable two flags for the feature to function:
- android-open-pdf-inline (for Android 15 and above)
- android-open-pdf-inline-backport (for Android 15 and below)
Since Chrome 136, however, the inline PDF viewer is enabled by default. This means there’s no longer a need to download and clutter your device with countless PDF files—now you can simply view them within the browser itself. If you do need to download a file, you can easily do so via the browser menu by tapping the download icon.
Following Chrome, Brave has also introduced this feature in its latest Android release, version 1.79.118, which is based on Chromium 137.
Despite numerous requests on the Vivaldi Community, the Vivaldi Android team has not yet implemented this feature. Perhaps they just need a little encouragement. At the moment, enabling the relevant flags results in the page reloading indefinitely. Since this is a Chromium-based feature and Vivaldi itself is built on Chromium, implementation should be relatively straightforward. The key lies in Vivaldi Android’s team prioritizing and integrating these useful features already available in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.
Hopefully, this article helps nudge them in the right direction.
Another feature Vivaldi lacks is a high-performance ad blocker like uBlock Origin. Even Opera has integrated a comparable solution. If Vivaldi has reservations about making it the default, they could at least offer it as an optional choice, letting users decide what suits them best.
Thank you all for reading. Have a great day!