Opera has partnered with Spotify to introduce a new Dynamic Theme for the Opera One R2 browser, called Sonic. This is the first browser theme in Opera’s browser that visually reacts to music playing through the Opera Music Player. Opera described the theme as an “audiovisual experience” where the browser’s background animation responds to the audio being played.
The animation turns into finer particles that react to the music and resemble the effect of sound waves on a thin layer of sand. Users can also customize the animation’s look with different colors, such as vivid for dance music, or monochromatic for post-rock.
To activate the theme in Opera One R2, you must connect Spotify to the Music Player in the sidebar and start playing some music. On a technical level, the new Sonic theme uses WebGPU standards and shaders. The browser listens to the audio and converts it into a power spectrum texture, before passing it to the shader to create visual effects that are in sync with the music being played.
Users who decide to start a call or watch a video will see the animation pause with the music, this ensures that no additional system resources are used in the background. To see this theme, you must be using the dark mode in Opera One.
In addition to the new theme, Opera users in selected countries are being offered Spotify Premium for free via the Music Player in the Opera One R2 sidebar. The offer varies by country, here’s a rundown:
- 3 Months Free: Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Spain, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States (for new subscribers).
- 2 Months Free: India (for all users) and France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States (for users who previously paid but canceled more than 30 days ago).
- Pay 1 Month, Get 3 Months Free: Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
- 3 Months for 99 TRY: Turkey.
To get started, grab Opera now from the Opera download page.