  Relaxation of braided coronal magnetic fields through reconnection is thought
to be a source of energy to heat plasma in active region coronal loops.
However, observations of active region coronal heating associated with an
untangling of magnetic braids remain sparse. One reason for this paucity could
be the lack of coronal observations with a sufficiently high spatial and
temporal resolution to capture this process in action. Using new observations
with high spatial resolution (250-270 km on the Sun) and high cadence (3-10 s)
from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on board Solar Orbiter, we observed
the untangling of small-scale coronal braids in different active regions. The
untangling is associated with impulsive heating of the gas in these braided
loops. We assess that coronal magnetic braids overlying cooler chromospheric
filamentary structures are perhaps more common. Furthermore, our observations
show signatures of spatially coherent and intermittent coronal heating during
the relaxation of the magnetic braids. Our study reveals the operation of
gentle and impulsive modes of magnetic reconnection in the solar corona.
