How to try out the new Vivaldi email client on Linux

The Vivaldi web browser has a new feature: a built-in email client. With it, users can read their email directly through their web browser without needing to deal with webmail.

In this guide, we’ll go over how to try out the new Vivaldi built-in email client.

Install the Vivaldi snapshot build

The new Vivaldi email client is available to Linux users currently through the pre-Beta snapshots. This means that if you now have Vivaldi’s latest stable release on Linux, it likely doesn’t have access to the client yet.

However, it is straightforward to switch over to the snapshot build that allows you access to the new built-in email client. In this section of the guide, we’ll show you how to get it working.

To start the installation of the latest Vivaldi Snapshot, uninstall the current stable release of the browser. Once that’s uninstalled, open up a terminal window on the Linux desktop and enter the commands below to install the snapshot that has support for the mail client.

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, you can download the snapshot DEB package from the November 24th, 2020 blog post that announced the new mail feature. To get the DEB package, click on this link, scroll down to “Download (2115.4),” and click on “DEB 64-bit” to grab the file.

Once you’ve downloaded the Vivaldi DEB package to your Linux PC, use the CD command to move into the “Download” directory where the Vivaldi snapshot DEB package is located.

cd ~/Downloads

Finally, install the snapshot on your Linux PC using the Apt command.

sudo apt install ./vivaldi-snapshot_3.5.2115.4-1_amd64.deb

Debian

Debian has support for the new Vivaldi snapshot since the blog post links to a DEB package. To get it, head over to the November 24th, 2020 post, scroll down to the “Download (2115.4)” section and click on “DEB 64-bit” to grab the file.

After downloading the DEB package to your computer, use the terminal window to CD into the “Downloads” directory. Then, execute the dpkg command to install the latest Vivaldi browser snapshot.

sudo dpkg -i vivaldi-snapshot_3.5.2115.4-1_amd64.deb

Keep in mind that during the dpkg installation process, errors may appear. These errors are dependency issues and can easily be fixed by running the apt-get install -f command in a terminal.

Arch Linux

Officially, Arch Linux doesn’t support the new snapshot via the blog, but there is an AUR package that downloads it and installs it, so you can still get it working. To start the installation process, install the Trizen AUR helper.

sudo pacman -S git base-devel

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git

cd trizen

makepkg -sri

After getting the Trizen AUR helper working on your Linux system, you can quickly use it to get the latest Vivaldi browser snapshot on your system.

trizen -S trizen -S vivaldi-snapshot

Fedora

As noted in the latest blog post, the Vivaldi snapshot supports Fedora Linux announcing the new email client feature. To get the snapshot set up on your Fedora system, head over to the blog post, scroll down to “Download (2115.4),” and select “RPM 64-bit” to grab the latest RPM package file.

Once the RPM package file is done downloading, use the CD command to move into the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Install the latest snapshot on Fedora with dnf.

sudo dnf install vivaldi-snapshot-3.5.2115.4-1.x86_64.rpm

OpenSUSE

Like Fedora, OpenSUSE has support for the latest Vivaldi snapshot, as there is a link to an RPM package file in the newest blog post. Head over to the newest snapshot post, scroll down to “Download (2115.4),” and select “RPM 64-bit” to download it.

When the download is complete, use the CD command to move into the “Downloads” directory. Then, execute zypper to install the package.

cd ~/Downloads

sudo zypper install vivaldi-snapshot-3.5.2115.4-1.x86_64.rpm

Setting up email in Vivaldi

The experimental Vivaldi email client is enabled through the vivaldi://experiments area. Open up a new tab in the Vivaldi browser and paste the following URL in the address bar.

vivaldi://experiments

After placing the URL in the URL bar, press the Enter key on the keyboard to go to the experiments page. Once on the experiments page, you will see a few disabled features that you can turn on.

To turn on the Vivaldi email client, locate the checkbox next to “Calendar, Mail & Feeds.” Then, restart the browser by closing all of the windows, and re-open it.

Once the Vivaldi web browser is re-open, you will now see an email icon on the left-hand sidebar. Click on it to open it.

When you click on the mail icon, a window will appear that says “Add your first mail account,” followed by a button called “Add Mail Account.” Click on the “Add Mail Account” button to set up your email account in the Vivaldi email client.