Opera’s New Browser Is Built to Break Your Doomscrolling Habit

There's a lot going on right now. And it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. Especially when you're (maybe chronically) online. Most of your work life, and personal life, all happens online. And sometimes it's really easy to get carried away doomscrolling and forget that, sometimes, you need to touch some grass. Opera Air is a new browser, hoping, trying, to save you from all of that.

Opera Air has built-in features that remind you to take a break every hour or so, and in that break time, suggests that you do some breath work, meditation, or some relaxation exercises. There's also a dedicated background music feature that plays customizable binaural beats to help increase your productivity, or to help calm you down a bit.

A light and airy browser

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Opera Air is a visually lightweight browser, with transparent UI elements and no interface bloat. It's built on Chromium, so all your extensions will work fine. Plus, default Opera features are still here, including Workspaces, a built-in ad-blocker, and a free VPN.

For the main interface, there's just a simple floating pill shaped vertical bar, where you'll find the Boosts button for background music and the Take a Break button for quickly accessing meditations. Other than that, there are shortcuts for Opera's Aria AI assistant, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, which you can all remove.

Guided breath work and meditations for breaks

Opera Air will remind you to take a break after 60 minutes of use, but you can customize this to instead happen every 45 minutes or every 180 minutes. The Take a Break feature can be accessed anytime from the vertical sidebar in the start page, or using the Command+K keyboard shortcut.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Opera has done an impressive job of curating its breath work exercises, neck stretches, and meditations. There's a male voice and a female voice, and there are multiple recordings of various length, so you can do either a quick three-minute breathing exercise, or a 13-minute body scan.

I particularly liked the design of the breath work interface. It has an interactive bubble for breathing in and breathing out, and coveres the most frequently used breathing techniques like Box breathing, 4-7-8, and De-stress breathing. If you're interested, I've written about the benefits of breath work in our detailed guide.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The same goes for meditations too. You can do a quick mindfulness meditation, or something focused on inner calm. There's an option to do a body-scan as well.

The Neck Exercise section uses your camera to check how you're moving, and guides you through the movement using a 3D model.

Overall, Opera's built-in meditation and breathing exercises do a great job for beginners.

Binaural beats are quite fun

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

What I found the most interesting in my time testing the Opera Air browser was the Boosts feature. It uses binaural beats, which are an auditory illusion that occurs when two slightly different frequencies are played in each ear. Of course, this works best with headphones. But the tracks that Opera Air has curated for focus, and relaxation are quite good and engaging. I'm using the Energized Focus one as I'm writing this. Here, too, you can start a 30-minute or 45-minute session, to serve as a reminder to take a break when the music is done.

Built-in features have that extra edge

There is no lack of breathing exercise tutorials on YouTube (I'm currently partial to the coherence breathing technique). And we have talked about the best meditation apps already. You'll also find extensions that help you focus by blocking out distractions, and again, YouTube is filled with audio tracks that help you focus.

All these resources mean you can handle your meditation all on your own, but if you're like me, you won't always remember or prioritize it at the right moment. Having a browser that's purpose-built around this, that gives you a reminder every 45 minutes, has focus music integrated, and can help you breathe and practice mindfulness meditation, can be quite helpful. Even if the browser succeeds in making you check in with yourself once a day, it's still a lot better than the alternative, which is constant panic and no breaks. Not to mention, all these features are free in Opera Air, while meditation apps can sometimes cost $10/month.

Opera Air is available in Early Access on Windows and Mac, so you can try it out for yourself in just a few short clicks.

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