[Opera Tips] Disable Bookmarks Trash Folder, Sidebar Extensions and Chronological Tab Switching Feature
Recently Opera team released version 30 of Opera web browser which comes with many new features and improvements. Three of these new features are:
- New Trash folder in Bookmarks
- New chronological tab switching feature
- Sidebar extensions
Opera 30 comes with a new “Trash” folder in Bookmarks which contains deleted bookmark items so that you can restore them later if you want. Its a good addition for Opera users but people like me may find it an annoying addition. Actually I always use Shift+Delete key combination in Windows OS to delete files and folders permanently without sending them to Recycle Bin and forcing someone to use Trash folder in Opera web browser will definitely annoy people as they always need to empty Trash folder to permanently remove favorite items otherwise they’ll remain in the Trash folder forever.
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Similarly the second new feature which is chronological tab switching may also annoy many people. Almost all web browsers cycle or switch between opened tabs in the sequence they appear on the tab bar so whenever you press Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab key combinations to cycle through tabs, the web browsers switch between all tabs one by one without skipping any tab.
But in new Opera version, Opera team has introduced the new chronological cycling feature which cycles through tabs in most recently used order. So when you press Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab key combinations, Opera will cycle between tabs on the basis of your recently used tab history. In other words, it may skip some tabs and will switch between tabs which you have used most recently. The newly added Tab menu button shows the tabs list and cycles between recently used tabs.
This new behavior might become irritating within few minutes of Opera usage.
Third new feature is sidebar extensions which are basically small add-ons present on a thin sidebar showing on the left-side of the web browser. You can install and add new extensions on the sidebar using Opera extensions gallery. You can show/hide the extensions sidebar using Opera menu -> Extensions -> Sidebar option or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+S keys together.
If you don’t like extra unnecessary features in software, you may dislike this new sidebar extensions concept as well.
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That’s why today in this article, we are going to share tips to disable all these new but annoying features in Opera web browser.
If you also want to remove Trash folder in Bookmarks, sidebar extensions and want to restore previous sequential tab switching feature in Opera, follow these simple steps:
Table of Contents
A. Disable Chronological (Recently Used) Tab Switching / Cycling
1. Launch Opera web browser, click on Opera button and then click on Settings option. Alternatively you can directly launch Settings page by pressing Alt+P keys together.
2. Now scroll down to bottom and disable “Cycle tabs in most recently used order” option present under “User interface” section.
3. That’s it. It’ll immediately disable the new chronological tab switching feature and will restore the good ol’ sequential tab cycling feature in Opera.
PS: Did you notice the “Show tab previews” option given under user interface section on Settings page? You can enable this option to see preview of a tab by hovering your mouse cursor over that tab. In this way you’ll not need to switch to that tab from your current tab.
B. Disable “Trash” Folder in Bookmarks
1. Open the hidden secret advanced configuration page of Opera using opera://flags command in addressbar as told in following tutorial:
How to Access “Advanced Configuration” Pages in Web Browsers?
2. Now press Ctrl+F keys together or click inside “Search experiments” box. Now type Trash and it’ll show “Trash folder for bookmarks” option.
3. The option will be set to “Default (enabled)“. Change its value to Disabled using the drop-down box.
4. Opera will show you a message “Your changes will take effect when you relaunch Opera” along with a button to relaunch Opera. Click on the “Relaunch now” button to restart Opera web browser.
That’s it. Upon restart, you’ll no longer see Trash folder in Bookmarks.
In future, if you want to re-enable Trash folder, simply set the value of “Trash folder for bookmarks” option to “Default (enabled)” again.
1. Open opera://flags page again.
2. Now press Ctrl+F keys together or click inside “Search experiments” box. Now type sidebar and it’ll show “Extensions sidebar” option.
3. The option will be set to “Default (enabled)“. Change its value to Disabled using the drop-down box.
4. Opera will show you a message “Your changes will take effect when you relaunch Opera” along with a button to relaunch Opera. Click on the “Relaunch now” button to restart Opera web browser.
That’s it. Upon restart, you’ll no longer see sidebar extensions option in Opera menu. The entire feature will get disabled permanently.
In future, if you want to re-enable sidebar extensions feature, simply set the value of “Extensions sidebar” option to “Default (enabled)” again.
Also Check:
In Opera 40.0 hints B (Disable “Trash” Folder in Bookmarks) and C (Disable Sidebar Extensions Feature) do not work because searching for “trash” or “sidebar” now shows:
Nothing found for “” Maybe try using a different search query?
I can’t find regular settings for these annoying behavior.
the flag “trash” is not in the flags page. what’s going on? Only wokrs in opera 40.0