Every Browser Should Have Opera GX’s New ‘Panic Button’

The internet is a wild place. Some of it is appropriate to consume in any environment, but plenty of it is NSFW, for one reason or another. Whether you’re browsing the darker side of the internet at home or at work, there may be times when no one should see your screen—and if they do, you may be mortified, chewed out, or fired.

But what are you going to do: Only look at what the people around you expect you to? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s your right to watch Netflix at work, dammit. So the only thing to do is watch in existential horror, ready to pull the plug on your PC at the first sign of your boss.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Opera GX has a new feature it’s calling the “panic button.” With one press of the button, Opera mutes every tab open in your browser and hides all windows, replacing them with a preset selection of boring, SFW options. That way, should someone walk into the room you’re browsing in, you can “panic” your PC into a socially acceptable state.

How to use Opera GX’s panic button

The panic button is available now in Opera GX; to use it, make sure you’re running the latest version of the gaming browser on your Mac or PC. (This won’t be available in Opera’s standard browser, just FYI.) Once you open Opera GX, head to Settings, then, under GX, scroll down and click Early Bird. This section gives you the option to enable features that are currently being tested and aren’t available as default in the app. It just so happens panic button is one such feature. When you click Early Bird, all in-testing features will be enabled, not just panic button. Scan through the other options to see if they’re things you want in your browser: If not, toggle them off, then hit Relaunch to finalize your choices.

Now that panic button is enabled, try it out! Just hit F12, and, by default, Opera GX will randomly choose one of the following links to replace the windows you currently have open:

• YouTube
• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• Google Docs
• Twitch
• Reddit
• Gmail
• Github
• Google News
• Steam

Those options may be fine when browsing at home, but if you’re using Opera at work, your boss may raise an eyebrow when they see YouTube or Twitch on your screen. Luckily, you can customize this list to contain any sites you want. Just head back into Settings, then click on Panic button from just above the Early bird option. Add any new sites you want to the rotation, or edit or delete the defaults.

Image: Opera Norway