How to Disable ‘Home’ Tab in Opera Mini on any Phone

Opera Mini browser’s start page and new tab displays two kinds of pre-installed tab. One is ‘Home’ and another is ‘Speed Dial’. Here’s how to remove or turn off the ‘Home’ tab.

Starting from Opera Mini version 7, Opera Software has introduced a new section called ‘Home’ in its Opera Mini browser. Home stays as another tab and sits beside the so-called Speed Dial tab. If you are an old user of Opera Mini, you know that this is really a new feature. Android version of Opera Mini didn’t get the Home tab until the version 7.5. Home tab is addressed as ‘Smart Page’ by Opera Software.

While Speed Dial is for accessing favorite sites quickly, Smart Page is to show you personalized contents and social updates. As of now, Smart Page has generally four sections labelled as My Sites, Social Networks, My News and Suggested Links. My Sites shows your recently visited websites; Social Networks shows you updates from your Facebook and Twitter (if you configure them); My News shows latest news/updates from your frequently visited websites; and Suggested Links shows link suggestions from different categories depending on your location and interest. Smart Page can also includes promotional contents and advertisements. The overall Smart Page heavily depends on your interest, location and context.

Thought it’s useful for many, I think it’s also annoying to some. This Smart Page/Home tab consumes your bandwidth constantly and also doesn’t care about your privacy.Unfortunately Opera Mini doesn’t have option to customize Smart Page or remove specific sections from it. It also kills Opera Mini’s simplicity look. Because of these facts, you might want to remove Home tab from your Opera Mini. Proceed to see how to do it.

Turning off Opera Mini’s Home/Smart Page Tab

1. In Opera Mini, tap on Opera icon at bottom-right corner (top left corner on tablets) and hit Settings then.
   
2. Scroll to bottom and tap Advanced link.
   
3. Deselect the ‘On’ button next to Home page section.
   
4. You are done disabling Home tab in your Opera Mini.

Above guide should apply for most platforms including Android, feature phones, Windows phone. The home tab isn’t present in iOS version of Opera Mini.

By this way you can remove Opera Mini’s Home tab and only keep the speed dial menu.