Vivaldi has just released an update introducing a number of useful features built into the browser itself.

Starting with today’s patch, the browser includes a full-featured email client, as well as a calendar and a feed reader. Should Vivaldi’s competition start to worry?

Vivaldi is a smaller browser that many users may not even have heard of yet. Since the market is still dominated by Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari, some stat counters don’t even register Vivaldi and just bundle it with other similar browsers. However, today’s update might just be the boost Vivaldi needed to garner a bit more interest from the internet at large.

Instead of using separate email clients such as Microsoft Outlook or resorting to Gmail and Google Calendar, Vivaldi users can now access all of these features from the browser. The feature, called Vivaldi Mail 1.0, aims to do more than just be an integrated email client – which makes sense. After all, Gmail and Outlook can be used through the browser, and accessing them is as easy as clicking on a bookmark. That’s why Vivaldi seems keen to stand out a bit by making it easier to manage your emails.

Perhaps the most interesting feature provided by Vivaldi Mail is the fact that you can combine all your email services into one, whether it’s a Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo account. Vivaldi indexes all your emails, which means you can come back to them when you’re offline, and that even applies to emails you haven’t had a chance to open yet. Vivaldi teases that it will automatically detect your mailing lists and chat threads, as well as give you the ability to easily search through everything.

Vivaldi also tackles a problem that many of us have, which is having too many mail folders, leading to an overall feeling of disorganization. The browser automatically sorts your mail into different views and folders. Each email can be placed in multiple views at once, so if multiple categories apply to a message, you’ll find it in the correct folders.

Users can switch between different views and turn them on or off, so if you want to hide all spam, you can. All views are visible by default, so you’ll probably want to go into the settings and disable a few when first setting it up. The browser also provides configurable shortcuts that make it easy to compose a new email, reply to existing emails, and more.

Vivaldi’s calendar tool is very similar to other calendars, but it lets you choose whether you want to use a local calendar or an online calendar. It can also be sorted into different views, allowing you to choose how much information you want to see per event. The built-in RSS feed also offers a range of customization options that should help you filter out spam and keep news interesting.

Today’s update does bring some great features, but will it be enough to truly put Vivaldi on the board? That may be the case, but Google and Microsoft can rest easy – their numbers are way too high for a smaller player like Vivaldi to catch up to quickly. Either way, it could be a nice option for users who crave a simpler experience across many services.

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