[Tip] How to Disable New Material Design Settings Page and Restore Classic Settings Page in Opera

Opera web browser is based on Chromium, the same browsing engine used by Google Chrome web browser, so you may see many similarities between both the browsers. In past Opera web browser was based on their own Presto engine but long time back they switched to Chromium engine. Since then Opera was using a custom Settings page containing different sections such as Basic, Browser, Websites and Privacy & security.

The default Settings page of Opera looks very basic and outdated in my opinion. It uses small fonts, old style checkbox and radio buttons, etc.

Now Opera has launched a brand new Settings page in newer versions which is based on new Material Design. The new Settings page is very similar to Google Chrome‘s Settings page.

Following screenshot shows the new Material Design Settings page of Opera live in action:

As you can see the new Settings page looks modern and clean. It’s based on “One page for all settings” concept used by Google Chrome. It doesn’t contain different categories, all options are present on a single page.

Toggle buttons are given to turn on/off an option. The page also contains an “Advanced” button/link at bottom which shows/hides advanced options such as privacy & security, etc.

So basically the new Settings page is divided into 2 categories: Basic and Advanced. Basic settings contains options such as wallpapers, browser appearance, sidebar, synchronization, search engines, etc. Advanced settings contains options such as privacy and security, passwords and forms, VPN, battery saver, My Flow, Opera Turbo, user interface, downloads, system, shortcuts and reset settings.

If you don’t like the new Material Design Settings page and want to disable it, this tutorial will help you.

Following steps will allow you to bring back the classic Settings page in Opera web browser:

1. Launch Opera web browser and type opera://flags in addressbar and press Enter. It’ll open the hidden secret advanced configuration page called “Experiments”.

2. Now click inside “Search flags” text box and type material. It’ll show following option in the result:

3. The option is set to “Default”. Click on the drop-down box and select “Disabled” option.

4. Opera will ask you to restart the browser. Click on “Relaunch now” button to restart Opera.

That’s it. Now open Opera Settings page using Menu -> Settings option or by pressing ALT+P keys together and you’ll get back the old classic Settings page.

PS: If you want to restore the new material design Settings page in Opera, select “Default” option from the drop-down box again and restart the browser.