What Opera’s PROXY actually is

Opera itself says its built-in PROXY only protects your browsing within Opera, not the whole device. Only the tabs go through it, and instead of a country you choose one of three regions: Europe, the Americas or Asia.

That rules it out when you need a particular country, say a Russian address from abroad or an American one. In VanyaPROXY you pick the country yourself, out of 187 countries, and the tunnel takes in the entire system, Discord and messengers included.

Switching it off

  1. Find the PROXY button

    Look at the left end of the address bar. If there’s a PROXY button, Opera is sending tabs through its own server on top of VanyaPROXY, and sites see Opera’s address rather than the country you chose.

  2. Flip the switch

    Click the button and switch it off in the pop-up. If you don’t see the button, type PROXY into the settings search and make sure it’s off there.

  3. Check the country

    Open ipinfo.io in Opera. If it shows the same country as Location in the app, your tabs go through VanyaPROXY. Any other country means Opera’s server is still in the way.

Opera GX

Opera GX has the same built-in PROXY, so treat it the same way. On its own it covers only the browser, while your game launcher and Discord go around it. With VanyaPROXY all three share one tunnel.

If pages and videos in GX are slow even with the PROXY, open GX Control. When Network Limiter is on, the browser gets exactly the speed set there, and no tunnel will change that.

Opera on a phone

Can Opera on a phone use VanyaPROXY?

Yes. Install the VanyaPROXY app, and every app on the phone, Opera included, uses the PROXY. The phone guide has the setup steps.

YouTube in Opera loads through the same tunnel as your other tabs. If it still stutters on a computer, see the desktop tips or read why YouTube is throttled in Russia.