Goto URL opera://settings/startPage. You'll see a suggestions option that you can disable (among other things).

Goto the URL opera://flags/#search-in-open-tabs, disable the flag, and restart Opera.

Test this solution. Remove the Opera Safe Store password from Keychain Access login item.

Steps:

Open Keychain Access application

Choose 'login' keychain on left

Choose 'Password' group

Find 'Opera Safe Storage' entry, right click it and choose Delete.

You can goto https://addons.opera.com/en/wallpapers/?tag=animated and install one of the animated wallpapers. Then, in Opera, goto the URL opera://about and take note of the "profile" path. Then, close Opera and look in the "themes" folder in the profile folder.

You'll see the folder for the wallpaper you installed. In it, you can see how to create your own. You then just zip up your persona.ini file with the webm file and thumbnail and you 'll have your custom wallpaper.

Log into https://gemini.google.com/app in a tab.

Then, enable the "Custom user sites for browser sidebar" flag at the URL opera://flags/#sidebar-site-panel, restart Opera, click the 3 dots at the bottom of the sidebar, scroll down to Custom Site Panels and add https://gemini.google.com/app.

Things you can try:

Goto the URL opera://about and take note of the "profile" path. Then, close Opera and delete the WidevineCDM folder in the profile folder.

Then, start Opera, goto the URL opera://components, click "update" for Widevine, let it update, and restart Opera.

Then, start Opera and goto https://html5test.com/ and make sure it shows "yes" for h.264 support and "yes" for aac support.

Once that's good, goto https://bitmovin.com/demos/drm, make sure it says "Using Widevine" above the video and "Widevine" for EME below the video, and "video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42c00d" for MSE below the video. And, make sure the video plays and you can hear its audio.

Then, goto the URL opera://settings/siteData, type spotify.com in the search-cookies field and choose "remove all shown".

Then, goto https://open.spotify.com/ in a new tab, log in, and try to play some music.

If you still have problems, goto the URL opera://flags/#reduce-user-agent, enable the flag, restart Opera, and try again.

If you still have problems, goto the URL opera://settings/system, disable hardware acceleration, restart Opera, and try again.

If you still have problems, goto the URL opera://extensions, disable all your extensions, and restart Opera.

If you still ahve problems, make sure you're not using Opera's VPN, and try turning off Opera's Adblocking and tracking protection.

If you still have problems, try all of the above with a standalone installation.

You can also goto the URL opera://settings/content/protectedContent, and make sure "Sites can play protected content" and "Sites can use identifiers to play protected content" are set with no sites in the custom behaviors list.

As an alternative for now, note that you can enable the "Custom user sites for browser sidebar" flag at the URL opera://flags/#sidebar-site-panel, restart Opera, click the 3 dots at the bottom of the sidebar, scroll down to "Custom Site Panels" and add the URL for the web app you want (https://bsky.app/ for example).

You can't customize the icon for it in the sidebar and you can change its position, but it's something for now.

If you have any trouble logging in to the site in the sidebar, you can log in via a regular tab first and then reload the sidebar.

In the Opera program files directory, right-click on launcher.exe to create a new shortcut and place it on your desktop. Then, on the desktop, rename it what you want. Then, right-click on the shortcut, goto properties and then the "shortcut" tab. On that tab, modify the target to add the --user-data-dir command-line switch.

For example:

"C:\Program Files (X86)\Opera\launcher.exe" "--user-data-dir=C:\Users\yourusername\Opera2"

(I personally have a "My Program Files" folder in "C:\Users\myusername", so I'd use "C:\Users\myusername\My Program Files\Opera2" for example.)

You can create as many shortcuts as you want with each using a different profile folder.

See http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/#user-data-dir for more info.

Goto the URL opera://about and take note of the "profile" path. Close down Opera and delete the WidevineCDM folder in the profile folder. Then, start Opera, goto opera://components and try updating Widevine again.

You might want to make sure opera://flags/#new-component-update-mechanism is disabled too. It should be by default, but check that URL just in case.

Are you talking about the start page button that's missing on the left side of the address bar in Opera One builds?

So, with https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wargames/reviews for example, you're getting those errors?

I'm not getting any blocked_by_client errors on that page, for what it's worth.

@E-opera it might be sue to how Flatpak packages handle things. To test, try to see if it happens with the RPM package of Opera too or not.

Goto the URL opera://flags/#enable-jxl-image-format and enable "Enable JXL image format". Then, restart Opera.

Once Opera is based on Chromium 155, that will be enabled by default.

Are you using the RPM package or the snap package or the flatpak package of Opera?

Make sure "graphics acceleration" is enabled at the URL opera://settings/system and restart Opera. Then, goto the URL opera://gpu. At the top where it lists what things are hardware-accelerated or not, what are the results?

Is this for regular Opera or Opera GX or Opera Air?

What specific version of Opera as shown at the URLs opera://about?

What GPU do you have?

If you use a standalone installation of Opera GX instead, the assistant won't be installed.

Or, you could use this method (for browser_assistant.exe instead of opera_gx_splash.exe) to block execution of the assistant. See https://forums.opera.com/post/409763 for more info.

@albertombcs No thread. You need to create one.

@albertombcs Those are out-of-memory crashes that are unrelated to the issue in this thread.

I tested in older builds of Opera and see that typing a search engine shortcut like 'a' (when set for Amazon for example) just by itself does nothing and just searches for 'a' with the default search engine. A space after the 'a' though does the trick and searches Amazon (for example) with no search term.

In the latest builds of Opera, I see that 'a' and a space for example no longer does the trick and it has to be 'a', a space and then some other character that's not a space.

I'm not sure if that's an intentional change or not and not sure if the change comes from Chromium or something Opera did.

@NatureWithGreenWorld That's off-topic, but quickly, I'm a volunteer.