Arc browser launches its Windows client in beta
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An absolute shame in this day and age. But I have a feeling it's a requirement considering they raised $20M before even having a product ready.
Which leads to another point - what are they going to do to make sure they make a return for their investors?
What they'll likely do is start charging for their AI-powered subscription and make a business plan for teams while building some features for their collaboration.
You know that web browsers is not your typical "consumer app" right? And none of the current popular browser engines are closed-source.
Which will end the day Apple is forced to allow Chrome on iOS.
In the anglosphere and averaged out globally, yes, this is true. But country-per-country, the stats vary wildly. Some countries have ~20% Safari usage, others have ~20% Firefox usage. Other countries like Germany for example has Chrome usage below 50%, which is pretty neat.
But yeah, if you're a Usaian, I could understand if "the world" looks differently.
Only best effort, not a requirement.
But I won't be using a closed-source browser again, thanks to Chrome.
The UI rendering engine, not the web content rendering which is all Chromium.
> This means we may offer a WebKit version one day, or even build a rendering engine of our own. Time will tell!" [0]
They have however done some cool things with running Swift on Windows and rendering the UI via Windows APIs.
The UI "just clicks" for me:
- named persistent spaces for groups of tabs, some can be pinned, some can be ephemeral - spaces can have different profiles, so switching to personal stuff in a work context is no different than switching to any other space - side-by-side tabs within spaces give an iPad-like split screen experience in the browser. I know the OS is meant to do this, but honestly window management in macOS is totally fucked and achieving the same thing is really hard.
Overall it's made navigating the web more effortless, and I hope other browsers copy. Safari tried with Tab Groups, but it's a pale imitation and when I go back it's vertical tabs that I miss most.
I'll be honest - I didn't like it. It felt more like Safari than Arc, but fell short of both. I had a particular problem with 1Password, but also the UI just felt clunky.
I haven't tried it for several months though, it might be better now.
There's also the paid SigmaOS browser, which is is the same vein, and I didn't like that either - it makes different decisions than Arc, IIRC the vertical tab is persistent, kinda like slide over multitasking on iPadOS.
I have an ultrawide display and sometimes I'd like to just add a bunch of vertical tabs (e.g. if I'm browsing house listings and want them side-by-side). It'd be cool if I could get a vertically scrolling view of individual tabs, but the UX on that would be difficult to get right.
Oh, another thing Arc is good at is trackpad support - I can just two-finger scrolling between spaces and it's a really nice experience. I will probably move away from Arc eventually, since it's VC funded and pretty much doomed, but I guess if they have a paid model like Kagi I might be tempted.
I also hate fragmentation between devices. Pretty much all my devices are Apple - MBP, multiple iPads, iPhone, etc. The value proposition of native tab syncing is very high, and whilst Arc has a companion app I don't like that experience.
They also just announced that they submitted a mobile version of their browser (at least that's how I read it) to the iOS App Store. It's not to be published until early next year, but I'm also very much looking forward to a better mobile app, not just the companion, although the share extension is downright fantastic.
Clearly a distinctly minority attitude, but I guess that's life.
> Clearly a distinctly minority attitude
So... Not at all out of touch then, as most people seem to be fine with it?
People click on links they shouldn’t all the time. People accept user-hostile decisions and software all the time. Etc.
But the reality today is that most development on Chromium is done pretty much exclusively by Google with trivial amounts of external contributions.
That's why I use Firefox. I'm not necessarily happy with how that is overly dependent on Google but at least they are semi independent.
The main issue is that there are plenty of companies that like the idea of providing a browser that don't seem to be interested in funding the development of one. Other than Google which at this point is bank rolling Chromium, Firefox, and Safari. This is weird and not long term sustainable.
The rest of the browser, not for me. They have a whiteboarding feature, not sure why a browser needs that. They have AI now because of course they do.
I enjoy using it at home. The day they decide to charge $20 a month because of the AI features is the day I switch back to Chrome.
You can definitely use a browser that accommodates for this.
If I may ask, could another option be to try and find the root cause of why you have 40 tabs open?
Maybe the vanilla browsers out there can be sufficient for you if you solved the problem of having to many tabs open; keeping tabs to a minimum?
Reducing the number of tabs is a good solution, but browsers don't tend to have features for this. Arc does, and I rely on its tab archiving which I think is pretty good.
Getting used to Arc's keyboard shortcuts and command palette has made it pretty indispensable in my work flow.
I'm not trying to diss. I get it if you use WebUi of messenger services and maybe stats but can't think what-else it would be. I'd rather open a new browser window for those important services.
Myself gets overwhelmed when I have more than five. I use the bookmark bar more than tabs but an excessive amount of tabs? I would see it as a form of data hoarding...
I close all tabs when I finish work daily. As the same that I move all emails in to a week ending folder ensuring that I have a clean mailbox for the following Monday.
I keep tabs like production and development Firebase console, Github, Gmail, Trello, Slack, Google Cloud logs, documents/spreadsheets, Google searches, documentation/articles for features/bugs etc.
It makes my work faster since I everything I need is always available in the tab bar. Feature/bug related tabs are closed only when they are fully done and deployed to Production.
Think of them more as a combination tab/bookmark. Then tabs that are opened that aren't "bookmarked/pinned" are in a separate area; you can even set those to automatically close at the end of the day if you want
Do I need all of these? No. But figuring out which I don't need is more work so some will just accumulate for a while and once every few days I close everything.
Arc does a good job of expiring old tabs and also of letting me bump the priority of a tab in various ways.
Arc isn’t for everybody but if it “clicks” which requires getting over a somewhat steep learning curve it is great.
It’s also fair to question why it requires an account, but anything syncing across devices would (unless you handle that manually with version control or something else).
Arc is exactly what Chrome might be if it wasn’t beholden to an advertising-first company. The innovation within the Chrome app itself has languished & browser extension development and policy are prohibiting more & more significant user experience changes (not just blockers). Arc not only diverges from Chrome with a ton of nice user experience changes, it also adds new types of functionality like ad hoc browser extensions called Boosts that can be shared (very similar to UserScripts). So many posts that say this browser-based on Chromium is problematic because it constrains diversity in the browser market, but I wish more people would just try it out. It is a step in the direction. Maybe someday they will swap out all of what remains from Chromium, but to what end? Maybe the best thing about Chrome (and Chromium) is that it enables smaller companies to jump-start new concepts in browsing.
> List of Disabled Chromium Features > Google account sync, metrics reporting, telemetry/crash reporting.
...
> Logging & analytics > Sentry for telemetry/crash reporting. > Segment for telemetry > FAQ > Why does Arc require an account to use
I find Arc's marketing around the lack of Google features a little disingenuous. They claim to not log any PII data, which is admirable, but they don't mention IP addresses as PII data and most likely do have that incidentally, or might need it for abuse prevention, and they haven't had third party security audits.
My response to this.
Everyone uses the internet and thus by making such statements, this company can engage a lot of people.
I think this is an example of a problem that is far less "problematic" than what this company is trying to claim
At least, I was hoping for something more "revolutionary". I have seen tabs on the left side, colours representing the workspace you find yourself in, themes and similar ways of organizing all the different websites you visit.
In the end of the day, here is my take (I would love to be proven wrong, though). This is another attempt at trying to organize all the tabs you have open. It is and not a solution to the problem they describe.
TL;DR Another fancy browser to consider.
Vertical tabs for sure aren't revolutionary - but the way they treat tabs that are kind of a mix of a bookmark & pinned tab really clicks with the way my brain wants to use a browser. It really has fundamentally changed how I work on the Internet for the better
The first time I read about this, I didn't get the point. It seems to mostly be about aesthetics and maybe some noise suppression. I still don't see why I should run this over Firefox.
I know of another company that does something similar for the UI process, but with WebKit instead as the base:
https://github.com/ultralight-ux/ultralight#rocket-dual-high...
Though I must say I never organize tabs except pinning them.
IDK, maybe I might have ADHD or something, because I open every interesting link in a tab thinking I'll get back to it soon to finish reading or trying it out, but then never do because in the meantime I discover another more interesting tab, so they keep piling up.
I found that with this approach I still get the dopamine hit without getting stuck sifting through 30 articles.