Opera officially released its new browsing experience with a built-in ad blocker, now available with Opera Mini for Android and the Opera desktop browser.
The company has been working on a browser with ad blocking baked in for a while now. Opera started conducting tests back in March, when it released the ad blocking feature to its developer channel.
It now seems the beta testing phase was successful, as Opera is now ready to offer its ad blocking browser to all desktop users. Opera Mini brings the same feature to Android users, loading Web pages 40 percent faster, according to Opera.
The Opera browser for computers, meanwhile, is even faster than the Opera Mini app for Android, thanks to the new native ad blocker. The company says its desktop browser for Windows and Mac now loads pages as much as 89 percent faster than it did without ad blocking, and up to 45 percent faster than other browsers with third-party ad blocking extensions.
Moreover, Opera also highlights that its native ad blocking solution also puts notably less strain on the device's memory, compared to other similar tools.
How To Enable Ad Blocking In Opera Mini
On iOS, users can take advantage of ad blocking in the Opera Turbo savings mode, toggling the "Block Ads" option. In Opera Mini for Android, users can enable the ad blocking feature by accessing the "O" menu and tapping on the data savings summary, or via the same Opera Turbo route as for iOS.
"The built-in ad blocker can be enabled with a single click in settings," Opera further touts. "To deactivate it for a specific website, click the shield icon in the search and address bar and flip the switch."
A dialog box will display stats on blocked ads overall, as well as the blocked ads on the current page (see image above). Users can also compare the loading speed of a Web page with or without ad blocking enabled.
Lastly, Opera is also hosting a giveaway on its Twitter page, where users can participate by sending screenshots of their faster browsing on Opera for computers.
To learn more about Opera's new ad blocking feature, check out the video below.
