Meet Opera Air—a browser that cares about your mental health
04 Feb 2025

Norwegian tech giant, Opera, has launched a new browser, "Opera Air," to promote mental well-being and mindfulness.

The innovative features of this browser include break reminders, breathing exercises, soundscapes, and binaural beats for enhanced focus.

The company wants to turn the browsing experience from a mere utility tool into a stress management system.

Opera Air's unique design and features
Design innovation

Opera Air also stands out with its lightweight design language and semi-transparent theming.

The browser's sidebar also houses several unique features such as a break reminder tool, a boosts feature that plays a blend of music, ambient sounds, and binaural beats.

It also provides shortcuts to the company's Aria AI assistant, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

'Take a break' feature encourages mindful browsing
Break reminders

The "Take a break" feature in Opera Air works like a battery indicator with three bars that fade if the browser is used continuously for a long period.

You can set your preferred duration of continuous usage, following which the indicator level drops, prompting you to take a break.

The innovative feature encourages users to practice mindful browsing and manage their screen time effectively.

Opera Air offers guided exercises for breaks
Mindful activities

During breaks, users can do breathing exercises, neck stretches, meditation or full body scans. These activities are tailored to the length of the break and the user's preferred mode of activity.

For neck stretches, you can even activate the camera for guidance on posture and form during exercises.

Currently, these guided exercises are only available in English but plans are underway to include voiceovers in other languages.

Boosts feature enhances focus with binaural beats
Focus enhancement

Another unique feature of Opera Air is "Boosts," which provides a pre-set mix of music, ambient sounds, and binaural beats.

You can customize the music, ambient sound, frequency of binaural beats, and volume for each track. You can also adjust the duration for playing a boost from 15 minutes to unlimited.

This feature enhances focus by playing slightly different frequencies in each ear, creating a new "ghost" frequency effect in the brain.