On Tuesday, The Browser Company made its unusual new web browser, Arc, widely available on desktop for the first time.
I downloaded it this morning, and have been setting it up and familiarizing myself with its UI over the past few hours. First thoughts...it takes some getting used to, but I'm beginning to really like its organization potential.
Arc has changed my browsing experience and I’m not sure I’ll be able to go back to a traditional browser.
The UI takes a bit of getting used to, but works so much better than Chrome or FF for my daily work usage. Having ‘spaces’ for different tasks is a game changer being able to have all your necessary tabs ready to go, and you can switch profiles, having your work spaces on one profile logged into all your work accounts, and simply being able to flick back and forth to your personal space that has your personal accounts all logged in.
Developer tools are super useful for web developers, you have all the standard chrome console and debugs, with additional quality of life features added on top.
Yes it’s chromium based, but the Arc team spends a lot of their time optimising and speeding it up. It’s not the same resource hog that the Chrome browser is. Plus all Chrome extensions work on Arc, so you aren’t going to lose the plugins that you’re used to.
I love the weekly updates and seeing all the new QoL changes that the team implements.
I have been giving it a fair shot the past few days. It does some things I really like. I like the UI, after some initial learning curve I really like the way it handles tabs and spaces. The PIP for music/videos is really nice. Dragging a tab into my current window for a split view has actually been a really nice experience. As somebody who uses Notes an embarassing amount, Easels have actually been a good middleground between that and something like Evernote.
It has the biggest learning curve for a browser I have ever used, which does make me consider for how much widespread appeal it will have. I haven’t even touched a lot of their features I think.
However my biggest concern, coming from Safari, it seems like a huge resource hog. I am using it on my desktop so it’s…okay, but I have never got the fans on my iMac going from a browser before. I couldn’t imagine the battery impact on a notebook.
To be fair, they are aware of the resource usage and are apparently working on that in upcoming releases, but we will see. I am not confident they can get a Chromium based browser to be much more optimized. If they can get that down a bit, I might consider using it more longterm.
I applaud them for trying some different approaches to how a browser is designed, but I really didn't care for the UI and I don't want a Chromium browser, so it's just not for me. I'll for sure be sticking with Firefox, but I'm glad some people seem to love it. Different strokes and all.
This is such a nice browser that it’s become my daily driver.
But I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop: Will it enshitify down the road? I don’t mind paying something to support it, but if they go Adobe-level monthly subscriptions or something I’m gonna take hostages.
I’d used for a while on my MBP and it made it run crazy hot. I loved it and used it every day despite that but eventually it became too much.
I haven’t tried it on my M2 because of that. To be fair though, their customer service responsiveness and dev dedication is absolutely exceptional and unmatched.
They made a video on their YT a while back talking about their monetization plans. You can check their YT page, but from what I remember they were planning on a for-profit enterprise version while keeping the consumer level free. I might be a bit off on the specifics.
Which, best of luck to them. I hope that works out, but that model has been tried with little success for a lot of companies over the years.
With the web integrity outcry, I ditched Brave and really wanted to embrace FF but I caved for the easy transition to Safari…braces for stones to be thrown
I'm with you. I'd so much prefer to use Safari. Safari 17 is so, so much better than prior releases. But the amount of stupid compatibility problems with sites that keep cropping up drives me nuts.
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