Although Opera was once a very popular browser, it is now a niche browser with a market share of only about 2%. Opera is also an easy to forget option when we talk about browsers. However, Opera has not stopped innovating, and the newly introduced Lucid mode can greatly improve the user viewing experience.

Lucid Mode is Opera’s dedicated video optimization feature that helps make old and blurry videos look clearer and sharper, especially on high-resolution screens (as shown in the official demo below).

Lucid mode is essentially a sharpening feature that applies a “filter” to videos and images displayed on the website to optimize content. In other words, if you’re trying to watch a video that looks a bit older, Opera can automatically sharpen the content to improve the image quality and make the content look sharper. Judging from the official demonstration, this function will not only reduce the noise of the picture, but also improve the brightness and color effect of the picture, making the picture more layered.

Opera official instructions:

This feature works on all videos, such as those on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and can be enabled with one click of the floating button on the video. When activated, Lucid Mode makes content sharp and clear. It works with images too, don’t let low-quality content hinder your viewing experience.

This function is driven by hardware acceleration, and the computer’s GPU is responsible for processing the screen content. Therefore, when Lucid mode is turned on, it may have a certain impact on the performance of the device. Of course, the specific effect of Lucid mode may also depend on the performance of the GPU.

Users currently need to update Opera to the latest version (93.0.4585.70) to use Lucid mode, which is only available for Opera desktop browsers (Windows, Linux and macOS).