Opera has partnered with Spotify to introduce a new browser theme that will dance along to your music. This new audiovisual experience, is called Sonic.
Opera's always been a bit funky when it comes to themes. I'm barely surprised that it has done something like this.
To use Sonic in Opera One, open the browser's settings and click on Theme Gallery. You should see a new option called Sonic, click on it to set it as your browser's theme. One limitation you should be aware of is that Sonic is exclusive to Opera's dark mode. But it is customizable.
Sonic appears on Opera's start page, i.e., the new tab page. Opera's announcement says that Sonic "reacts to a user’s music, resembling the effect that sound waves have on a thin layer of sand", and when you access the Player on the sidebar to play music, "the animation turns into fine particles that dance across the screen". Here's a video demo of the visualizer.
That's kind of cool. It reminds me of Winamp's Milkdrop visualization plugin. Good ol' times! If you liked Milkdrop, check out ProjectM.
Opera's Dynamic Themes use shaders that follow the WebGPU standard for creating an animation that runs in the background of the browser, without consuming too many system resources. The Sonic Theme is only active when the Start page is accessed, of the browser, it will be paused when you play a video or start a call.
Opera's announcement states, "the browser captures audio from the sidebar and converts it into a power spectrum texture, where one axis represents frequency and the other represents time...." This means the visualizer feature is not restricted to Spotify. I was able to use it with other services.
The Sonic music visualizer is available in Opera One. However, Opera 124 is not available for Linux at the moment. It is only available for Windows and macOS. And I couldn't get the Sonic theme to show up in my Windows VM (though the Spotify Premium trial banner works). The theme works fine on macOS.
There's more. Opera and Spotify are giving away Spotify Premium for free for a limited time. This trial offer varies by Country, 3 months in some regions, 2 months in others, etc. Please read the offer's terms and conditions for further details.
You can avail this offer from the Music Player of Opera's sidebar. Click on the banner, and it should take you to Spotify's website, where you will be asked to sign in to your account. You will need to enter a payment method to avail the offer. Spotify will remind you 7 days before you're charged. It maybe a good idea to set a reminder yourself, to cancel the automatic renewal of the subscription.
Note: Microsoft Bing Rewards also has Spotify Premium, which you can claim for 0 points, and it's valid for 3 months.
In case you missed it, Spotify Premium now supports lossless audio streaming in some Countries.
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