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jamie_ca 3 days ago [-]
Writing was on the wall once they pivoted to Dia, I'm pretty happy having switched to Zen (though for a few things that matter, it's Firefox-based not Chrome).
They picked up a lot of cues from Arc - sidebar tabs, pinned vs generic tabs, global bookmarks, spaces...
summermusic 3 days ago [-]
+1 for Zen. It's got a lot of Arc's neat UX but without all the AI garbage.
al_borland 3 days ago [-]
I find it odd Arc has AI garbage when Dia was supposed to be their AI browser. If they were going to put AI in Arc anyway, they should have stuck with one browser instead of rug pulling everyone right as it started to actually take off.
I’m pretty sure I saw more Arc videos posted after Dia than before. None of the people seemed to be aware that the browser they were pushing was effectively end of life.
weikju 3 days ago [-]
> I find it odd Arc has AI garbage when Dia was supposed to be their AI browser.
Arc existed long before Dia, and had AI shoved into it when LLMs exploded, then the company decided to go all-in on an AI browser, Dia, and orphaned Arc...
butlike 2 days ago [-]
But to their point, why rug pull instead of updating Arc? My guess is it has something to do with The Browser Company's acquisition by Atlassian
weikju 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah, makes sense.
milch 3 days ago [-]
I use Zen as my work browser but weirdly the developers seem to have a few Arc features they are actively opposed to despite ... let's say taking heavy inspiration from Arc otherwise. Two examples I can think of off the top of my head are the auto closing of tabs, and preventing websites from taking over certain keyboard shortcuts.
mostlysimilar 3 days ago [-]
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Firefox have all those features? Why put third party intermediary between you and the source?
ciefa 3 days ago [-]
1) No they don't
2) Zen had them first
Firefox is "copying" from Zen, and I think that's good. I do like Zen, but I wouldn't mind having all the features in Firefox (and imho some of the UI lately in Zen is... weird)
yellowapple 3 days ago [-]
Pretty sure in most/all the cases mentioned, they were available as extensions long before Zen had them. In particular, both Zen's and Firefox's built-in vertical tabs feel like a bit of a downgrade from Tree Style Tabs (which I continue to use on Firefox, and also used on Zen last time I tried it).
cosmic_cheese 3 days ago [-]
Depends on what one values. I tried TST and Sidebery among other extensions for Firefox, but their "bolted on" feeling always bothered me. That can be somewhat fixed with userChrome mods, but those tend to be fragile and it's not unusual for them break with updates, and even with the mods they're not as integrated as native vertical tabs.
For my personal usage I find the deep nesting of TST to get in the way more than it helps and so the simpler model of Arc/Zen where nesting only happens intentionally is nice.
nextaccountic 3 days ago [-]
Indeed you need to write some firefox css to use either TST or Sidebery. But it's pretty rare for it to break. It actually broke a few days ago, I fixed it in a few minutes - ctrl+shift+alt+i opens the developer tools for the browser UI itself, then it's a matter of selecting the faulty element and writing the CSS to hide it or whatever. Or, ask a LLM to write the CCS for you. Or check out https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ since probably someone has posted a fix there
> even with the mods they're not as integrated as native vertical tabs.
Hmm what's Sidebery missing?
cosmic_cheese 2 days ago [-]
I was maintaining such a setup for a while and didn't have such luck. Sometimes it'd fully break and sometimes things would shift around due to other CSS changing, but whatever the case it's more than I had the patience to babysit.
> Hmm what's Sidebery missing?
The extensions themselves aren't lacking, but they suffer from being extensions and not part of the browser proper, which makes for occasional weird interactions and glitches and the "seams" between extension and host becoming tangible from time to time. Things just work better when the browser "knows" about the tabs being vertical and having deeper organization than is possible with horizontal tab bars, or is even designed around vertical tabs being the only option (like Arc/Zen).
nextaccountic 2 days ago [-]
Note that Firefox nowadays has vertical tabs. It's just less powerful than Sidebery (like, not sure if they nest)
3 days ago [-]
nextaccountic 3 days ago [-]
I used and love TST (plus a huge number of extensions - TST is an extension that is extended with further extensions!) but it's complex and clunky.
Sidebery can do the 80% of TST that matters, with a better UI and UX and saner defaults. Also it has a feature to save and restore all tabs, with the whole tree structure preserved (even though I think it should be its own extension)
Only problem is that I suspect that Sidebery has severe memory leaks (not entirely sure it's the culprit though)
zamalek 3 days ago [-]
Not to the degree of polish that Zen has. Source: I ran into a single particularly annoying Zen bug and attempted this: both myself and an agent.
You can add all the features, but you can't make them work well together (or look nice in some cases - which does matter!)
ciefa 3 days ago [-]
Might be true, but that was not the point. The comparision was Firefox and Zen, not Firefox, Zen and whatever else is out there :>
nsonha 3 days ago [-]
> first
Firefox has those features now, that's all that matters. Not sure I wanna trust a solo dev on my daily browser, however competent they are.
thiht 2 days ago [-]
No it doesn't, don't cherry pick what fits your narrative. Firefox has vertical tabs, that's it. It's great that Firefox finally has native support for vertical tabs, but its roughly 10% of what I like in Arc/Zen.
butlike 2 days ago [-]
Split tab view, convert to vertical/horizontal split, the easily swipable spaces... the list goes on
cevn 3 days ago [-]
Yes, the new library has so many problems, one of which is forced adoption. Zen fork time??
accidc 3 days ago [-]
Could you list a couple of things you find wierd? Wondering if its worth switching
tethys 3 days ago [-]
Not OP, but I am not a fan of the newly introduced library. Exploring my history is bad in Firefox, and this is even worse. It doesn’t show full page titles, so it’s almost impossible to find the right page.
huskyr 3 days ago [-]
History feels like the only part of Firefox that is still stuck somewhere in the late noughties. They should just copy what Chrome and Safari have done and make it a webpage instead of a separate window.
forgotpwd16 3 days ago [-]
Firefox's visible UI is made of webpages. They just decided to open this webpage in separate window without an option to do otherwise. Still can access it by visiting `chrome://browser/content/places/places.xhtml`.
cosmic_cheese 3 days ago [-]
Slight correction with Safari, it uses a native NSOutlineView rather than a webpage, but the point that history works better in the main browser window stands.
da_chicken 3 days ago [-]
Honestly, I haven't found browser history to be useful anymore. Not in 6 or 7 years. Too many sites are SPAs with server-side state, breaking the back button, breaking multiple open tabs in the same application, or breaking both.
queenkjuul 3 days ago [-]
I go hunting for pages i read months ago and need to reference again pretty often. Browser history containing only the site and title isn't great for that but it's what i have
fffrantz 3 days ago [-]
Agreed. It’s really annoying to be honest.
ciefa 3 days ago [-]
Honestly, pretty much this :')
jamie_ca 3 days ago [-]
Maybe I haven't looked too deep into Firefox multi-profile config, but:
- The distinction between pinned (soft-bookmarked) tabs and other tabs is very useful for me organizing things at work. (I didn't like when Arc added a setting to auto-delete other tabs X days after creating, though)
- Multiple "spaces" on the tab bar combined with global bookmarks at the top mean I can have a space for planning work and one for implementation work, and from both of those I have an easy link to Jira to search up tickets without needing to hop back and forth.
alternatex 3 days ago [-]
Personally, I just like the design of Zen more. With Firefox I felt like I was stuck with the same old UI forever. I'm not sure what Mozilla was doing with those bags of money from Google. I imagine Arc managed to do a lot more with their browser with way less money than Mozilla.
SV_BubbleTime 3 days ago [-]
> I'm not sure what Mozilla was doing with those bags of money from Google.
Being paid to not compete. That includes taking any sort of UI risk that would lead to evolution.
silvertab 3 days ago [-]
Crest (https://crestbrowser.com/) looks like an interesting option. You can use both Chrome and Safari as the backing engine, and its main goal is basically to replicate all of Arc's features. Still feels a bit immature but it already implements a lot of the functionality. I still haven't tried it as a full-time replacement but I just might with this annoucement.
imbnwa 3 days ago [-]
Am using it right now. iCloud sync of tabs/spaces can get funky; zoom is persisted to the tab, not the host, which is just bizarre but there's a roadmap to correct that to what it should be; be nice if they implemented a native adblocker but otherwise this has been a solid experience.
SomeonesAccount 2 days ago [-]
Looks good. Will try it out later
TSiege 3 days ago [-]
Are the shortcuts for moving between tabs and spaces good? I can see the appeal of the sidebar and the split view is genuinely cool, but it's features, like glance, feels really cursor heavy. Clicking on a page and then going back to the search results is so fast with a keyboard or track gestures. I want fewer mouse movements not more.
zeendo 3 days ago [-]
They're pretty good. There's a shortcut settings that lets you assign shortcuts for moving between spaces. I use Tridactyl for moving between tabs, though.
SomeonesAccount 2 days ago [-]
Zen is great on Mac, but on Windows it is nowhere near how good Arc felt (on MacOS). I think this is just a problem with the OS, with it not supporting SwiftUI and all that, but nonetheless, there doesn't seem to be a good browser for Windows. I am still using Chrome on Windows because A) I already use it and B) Vertical tabs are usable, and C) I have enough RAM for it
BoxwoodSeed 3 days ago [-]
If only Zen was in the repositories of my Linux system, I'd have given it a try. Not a fan of running a browser of all things from outside the repositories.
NoGravitas 3 days ago [-]
It's also in Flatpak, if that makes a difference.
zamalek 3 days ago [-]
I intentionally run it from Flatpak, even though NixOS has it, because you _really_ need a browser to update at a faster cadence.
forgotpwd16 3 days ago [-]
Should maybe request it then.
ahurmazda 3 days ago [-]
Alas! I made the jump to Zen browser but shitty support for audio share across tabs made work impossible. So back to Chrome (yes, need Google Meet for livelihood).
lnenad 3 days ago [-]
Zen turned to shit for me in the last month. So many stupid bugs started happening. For example, clicking on exes in the downloads would retrigger the download instead of running the file. Random crashes. I was able to drag the whole window by clicking on random parts of the page (I noticed this as I highlight text during reading). It got very slow. I tried to report these but the button to report would actually redirect to Firefox's feedback page lol.
I switched to Brave, migrated in a few minutes literally and feel much better.
trehans 3 days ago [-]
I looked at this a while back but couldn't figure out how to migrate bookmarks from Arc to Zen. Is that possible now?
butlike 2 days ago [-]
Yes, there's a github tool. I just ran the Arc-to-Zen tool from https://github.com/Thinkscape/arc-to-zen and it imported everything flawlessly. Zen now appears to be a drop-in replacement. Try it out!
soulesidibe 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
paufernandez 3 days ago [-]
Oh! Nice surprise, switched instantly! Love it!
whywhywhywhy 3 days ago [-]
The pivot from one new browser to another new ai browser was insanely bad optics and aura loss.
DrammBA 3 days ago [-]
Why is the first thing after the "calmer internet" intro an ad to another app?
Aurornis 3 days ago [-]
I had to look Arc up because I forgot what it was. For others confused like me:
Arc was an alternative web browser with novel UX and AI features built-in. The company was acquired for $610 million by Atlassian and development was halted in favorite of Dia, another browser with AI features and novel UX (which I also had to look up)
jerlam 3 days ago [-]
I think development was halted on Arc, and Dia was announced before the acquisition.
If Arc has AI features then I never saw them. Arc was a superb browser, far superior to any of the others due to the care they took over the UX.
There is no AI in it so far as I can tell, and I'm using it right now to type this comment. It's a chromium skin really, of course, but it's great.
jdejean 3 days ago [-]
One of my favorite parts of Arc was that they already discontinued new features. It’s perfect, I get to open the same tool every day with fresh chromium patches. I would gladly pay for this experience yet they never asked.
Anything else like Arc does too much. This is a true disappointment, coming from The Browser Company
thiht 2 days ago [-]
Just migrated to Zen this afternoon using https://github.com/Thinkscape/arc-to-zen, it's ok so far. I tried Zen a few months ago and at the time it didn't feel great compared to Arc (some transitions were not very smooth, some things didn't work just like in Arc) but it's really improved. After just a few hours I don't really feel a difference.
As a bonus it's based on Firefox so uBlock Origin is available.
butlike 2 days ago [-]
I saw it mostly in the new tab screen. When you type, there's an option to query chatgpt instead of doing a search/url input. ALso they bundled the Max AI which summarized pages. To me that was only useful to summarize pop culture chat stuff like "Why is XXXXXX getting cancelled?"
Your IP address, IP address-location data, device ID, the pages you visit using Dia and queries submitted, and other “User Content”.
Indeed, doesn’t look good at all.
nostrademons 3 days ago [-]
I was confused because the programming language that Hacker News is written in is also called Arc and I was like "Wait, did PG turn over maintenance to an independent foundation? Are they giving up now? What does this mean for HN?"
I made two additional wrong guesses, the Advanced RISC Computer class of machine firmware and the file archiving utility from System Enhancement Associates. (-:
(Back when the headline was "Arc is Sunsetting". I am so 2 minutes ago.)
drewbeck 3 days ago [-]
Note that Arc had no or minimal AI when it launched; its appeal for so many of us was its refreshing opinionated stance on the browser UX. The AI hype train hit them hard and they tried to pivot to Dia, which leaned fully into AI but did none of the fancy UX things that Arc did. From what I could see online most of the fans they attracted with Arc were turned off by the pivot. It was peak early AI hype, which didn’t help: so much more smoke and so much less fire than there is now.
Dia now does appear now to have many of the Arc UX features. Plus AI.
maccard 3 days ago [-]
Sometimes I wish I had the gall to bolt AI on to something and sell it for _half a billion dollars_ only to sunset it a year later.
InsideOutSanta 3 days ago [-]
Arc was already essentially discontinued in favor of Dia when they were acquired. It only received bugfixes.
MatthiasPortzel 3 days ago [-]
The raised their seed and series B, some $20 million, before Arc was publicly available. "gall" is a good word.
glenstein 3 days ago [-]
Also it was YACB (yet another chromium browser), as is the successor browser Dia.
fennecbutt 3 days ago [-]
Damn 610m for something they never used, just like the sapphire company Apple acquired.
Something is super, super fucked up with valuation of companies and the profiteering of late stage capitalism for stuff like that to be able to happen.
No wonder lots of people are saying the world feels worse than ever, everything's expensive and it seems in many ways we've regressed rather than "made things better for our children".
otterley 3 days ago [-]
Apple didn't acquire GTAT. They were just a supplier.
fennecbutt 3 days ago [-]
Ah, in that case thank you for the correction.
zaphirplane 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
throwaway13337 3 days ago [-]
Arc had a lot right.
The closest thing right now is Orion. It does the vertical tabs and the page modification in the same way. Webkit based.
It's made by the Kagi guys who I really agree with - bootstrapped and not VC backed. A sustainable business. And charging for a service instead of making your customers the product. That's real ethics to me.
Their browser is not open source, though, which is a major blow. But it would seem most browsers are not truly now, if you look into it.
The reason I switched was because it is the only browser that, on iOS, allows chrome/firefox plugins. I'm not even sure how they're doing this as I thought banning non-crippled plugins was part of the 'device is not mine' policy from Apple. But it's there. All my plugins. Including the ones I made myself.
I realize this sounds like an Ad. Not affiliated. I just think they're doing good stuff.
I really like Orion, wish more people would give it a try as it is a very solid browser.
jazzyjackson 3 days ago [-]
I like Orion too. No source but at least it’s zero telemetry
port11 2 days ago [-]
Orion’s extension bridge is really spotty, and WebKit itself is a bit disappointing. Both Orion and Safari fail to block ads that uBlock Origin will handle just fine. Both will lose a tab if you sometimes refresh it while it was in the process of loading. Both have mediocre caching that makes the back button sort of pointless.
cardanome 3 days ago [-]
Orion is also great for iOS devices as you can't install a proper Firefox an them. For those that don't know, apple is being apple and Firefox is forced to use the WebKit engine on those devices so complete shite and no proper ad blocking.
Last time I checked Orion was the only decent solution with at least some ad block capabilities.
kvam 3 days ago [-]
I will not switch to Dia, however easy they make it. Why?
Bacause I don’t want to be pushed towards a $100 per month plan where the «key feature» is an AI morning brief.
Oh weird. I use Dia now and then and noticed my ability to upgrade vanished, but I still have access to all the AI features and the morning brief things. I just assumed the Atlassian acquisition made it free for everyone. Is that not the case? Do people here actually see a upgrade prompt?
/EDIT: I looked into this by... well, asking Dia:
> That fits what I described. You aren't on a plan because you haven't had to pick one yet. People who were using Dia before paid plans launched on August 17 kept the AI features for free, with nothing to choose and no card on file. Dia says it will email those users at least 30 days before that changes.
>
> So nothing's wrong. It just isn't permanently free either. It's free for now because you joined early. When the notice email comes, you'll have about a month to decide:
So I'm grandfathered "for now", but the Daily brief and AI features are so low value to me, I just assumed they're free for everyone because of how little they do. I never use the built-in AI in Dia and get annoyed when a query that I wanted to go to a search engine gets answered by the assistant instead.
hbn 3 days ago [-]
Man that is a crazy price for an unimpressive list of features.
You can get Claude Pro for $20/month and if you hook it into a browser, I'm not sure what you'd be missing out on from those listed perks.
I mean I get the benefit of a prepackaged experience but not at 5x the cost.
slipwalker 3 days ago [-]
would be most gracious from them to open-source it. It would completely removes the bad aftertaste from those who trusted the product and the company.
asadotzler 3 days ago [-]
People that trusted them deserve the bad taste. Don't expect them to lift a finger toward open source, they won't and expectations that there was even a chance is another over-extension of entirely unearned trust.
hbn 3 days ago [-]
I think I saw something a while back that said they don't want to because they built a bunch of proprietary framework stuff that they want to keep for themselves cause they still use it in Dia.
DrammBA 3 days ago [-]
Since it's a client app someone else could open-source it for them instead.
SomeonesAccount 3 days ago [-]
yeah that would be the absolute best possible thing for them to do
swyx 3 days ago [-]
yes please ^ browser company engs!
SomeonesAccount 3 days ago [-]
No way swyx spotted in the wild (I read latent space)
swyx 3 days ago [-]
ayy thank you very much it is a labor of love
constantlm 3 days ago [-]
I've been expecting this news for a while, and I moved to Zen when they changed direction originally. Can highly recommend it as a near drop-in replacement for Arc, albeit built on Firefox.
Have had Zen in my browser collection for a while. On my Mac it's a secondary browser and it's my primary elsewhere.
It's picked up all the most important parts of Arc's design while leaving behind the bits that were questionable (such as TBC's decision to not have bookmarks) and at this point it's pretty solid.
I had been continuing to use Arc for the odd site that insists on something Chromium-based (usually without good reason) since it's the only chromeclone that feels somewhat at home on macOS and hasn't succumb to an ugly generic flat look. It'll be missed.
gekoxyz 3 days ago [-]
What's the primary browser on your mac? Safari?
cosmic_cheese 3 days ago [-]
For now, yes.
For a while Arc was my main, but I switched to Orion when it was announced that Arc was going on maintenance mode. Since then I've waffled between Orion and Safari.
danpalmer 3 days ago [-]
Arc was great, I never understood why they moved to Dia instead of just putting AI features into Arc.
The only reason I can figure out is that they decided the technical foundations were just wrong, which would be surprising because they put an astonishing amount of work into building some very specific technical foundations for Arc.
Now that Chrome has native vertical tabs I'm back on Chrome, but I do miss Arc's tab tidying and organisation.
freezepeachtoot 3 days ago [-]
You’re being very generous to them by assuming it was technical in nature. They pivoted to AI very early and made Dia their only focus despite it being quite obvious that their user base had zero interest in it. They attempted AI in Arc and had a massive backlash, so instead of recognizing that, they just decided to create a new browser and focus solely on that instead of the incredible UI they had built. If they had gone to a subscription model just to continue developing Arc, I would have gladly paid for it. Instead, they are trying to charge $100/mo for a browser with a useless AI implementation. TBC is the perfect case study in ruining a great idea with bad AI implementation.
jimmydoe 3 days ago [-]
Zen is buggy, much less buggy than before but still buggy.
Dia has sidebar tabs now, but it feels half baked, and the AI Chat button is an annoyingly permanent ads.
Nook was interesting for 30sec, but you will soon find out it's just not done.
RIP Arc, there's no match, I'll miss you.
app 3 days ago [-]
I'll miss Arc but got fed up about 4 months ago and switched to Safari with a combination of SupaSidebar[1] for the spaces/vertical tabs and OpenIn [2] for Air Traffic Control. I'm pretty happy with it!
I tried supasidebar for like a week, then used helium for month. In the past month I've settled on search with vimium: https://officecommun.com/search
drewbeck 3 days ago [-]
Damn. I’ve been riding hard for Arc since I installed it years ago. Dia looks like it has a lot of the same UI sugar thankfully, tho I’m sure there are things I’ll hate.
I’m still pulling for Atlassian to do Interesting Things with the app. AI can be part of it but I think there’s a ton of opportunity for a browser for the enterprise / organizations and atlassian is well positioned to do that, AI or no. Things like:
- shared company file
Management accessible directly in app
- cross saas–app workflows enabled at the browser level, managed centrally by the org
— slack, zoom, screen sharing/recording and other collab tools natively baked into the app
So many people spend all their work day flipping between different apps and docs in the browser and there’s sooo much more we (as humanity) could do to improve that experience. The browser is a natural site for it and I hope someone gives it a shot.
simjnd 3 days ago [-]
I switched back to Arc a few weeks into Dia because there are so many powerful features they refused to port to Dia. I submitted them as tickets, answered their forms, replied to their "what Arc features should we bring to Dia" twitter posts and still they never made it.
Dia is a joke.
timpera 3 days ago [-]
Yes, Dia has that "Arc feel", at least on macOS, it's very nice to use. Sadly, it still doesn't have all of Arc's features (I'll miss Boosts).
nicce 3 days ago [-]
Is account mandatory? Do I remember correctly that Arc used to have and it was quite blocker.
kvam 3 days ago [-]
Dia has a pretty hefty paid plan last time I checked, and so you will be using a browser constantly pushing you from free towards paid.
butlike 2 days ago [-]
Yes. An Atlassian account is mandatory.
falloon 3 days ago [-]
I was quite angry when they first announced that they weren't going to support Arc last year and refused to switch to their new 'AI-powered' Dia browser.
After a year to cool off, I gave Dia a shot. Despite wanting to hate it, I like the browser a lot. You can turn off the shit AI features, and it's a well designed and thoughtful UX.
As much as Josh is a tool, this is genuinely a great product and the team at TBC has executed really well.
jdgoesmarching 3 days ago [-]
That’s neat, but I don’t understand in what world I would migrate to a browser made by the people who just killed their browser after promising it would be maintained indefinitely. Especially after being bought by Atlassian, who has an almost perfect track record of ruining or sunsetting nearly every acquisition.
Pfhortune 3 days ago [-]
Makes me wonder what would have been if they had just continued on with Arc and implemented Dia features there, instead of flushing all that user goodwill down the toilet when they announced that Arc development was ending last year.
asadotzler 3 days ago [-]
You're OK returning to the vendor that fucked you over with their last product and trusting that they won't do it again with their new product?
swyx 3 days ago [-]
>As much as Josh is a tool
did you really have to include that? without substantiation this is just a mean offhand side swipe.
butlike 2 days ago [-]
The substantiation is sunsetting a popular browser because you bought into AI hype. Hence, tool.
Someone else said that earlier as well, so I browsered it in the title above.
saharshpruthi 3 days ago [-]
Dia is not a replacement for Arc, its for a different user entirely with different objectives.
They are trying to add Arc features into Dia, but its an afterthought. I used it for a month and came back, it was not a good experience.
Cd00d 3 days ago [-]
Can you please say more?
I've been using Arc on my personal laptop and phone exclusively for a couple years now, and want a more informed reason to or not to invest in moving over to Dia.
saharshpruthi 3 days ago [-]
When they first started making Dia they said Arc is too difficult for new Users, and it will not grow above a certain point because they mistakenly made it a niche power user product.
But that's why I personally liked it, it was for a power user. Having multiple profiles, and a clean working environment, a lot of small but smart really thought out features. It felt like a actual revolutionary product.
In Dia there is a constant menu bar, for instance to make it easier for users. But it spoils the whole clean experience of Arc.
Dia seems to be just for mainstream, I can understand giving the focus to Dia, but removing Arc seems to be foolish. Especially when so many people are still using it.
Dia is focused more on AI tools, and seems to be more distracting for me, the focus seems to be to sell us a subscription, it feels quite different from the straightforward feature rich, power user browsers, which was Arc.
I'm still not sure what Arc offered that can't be solved if you know OS shortcuts which also work across all your apps.
If you do, and you regularly tile windows, you know that vertical tabs are terrible because if you have 2 browser windows and tile them side-by-side, suddenly 40% of your screen is wasted showing tabs on 2 windows.
I really don't want to learn an entirely different set of multitasking shortcuts just for my browser. I know how to multitask with my browser already, the same way I multitask with everything else, and none of the solutions seem more convenient.
Str1p3 3 days ago [-]
It was a good browser with pleasant UI and interesting features that broke the status quo. The tiling problem can be solved by hiding the sidebar (and it also had versatile built-in tiling), and it's only a problem if you use tiling in the first place.
I don't know where you're coming from with the shortcut gripe, to be honest.
I think it's a good thing that people try to build something new and overthrow Chrome with its MANY flows.
adrian_m 3 days ago [-]
Arc conceptually merges bookmarks and pinned tabs. Non-pinned tabs are cleared automatically, and you just move a tab above the line to keep it. It's so conducive to the way my brain works, it's not an exaggeration when I say it was a revelation when I first discovered it.
Most browsers try to port the vertical tabs or the split view and proudly say "look, we did it, you can now switch from Arc" but none get this tab concept right, except for Zen which regrettably uses Firefox/Gecko as its base.
Str1p3 3 days ago [-]
and if you want examples of features that can't be solved with os shorctuts look at some of the replies in this thread, e.g. this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50199454
usrme 3 days ago [-]
I've been using Arc for years now and am really sad to see it being sunset, but am now trying my luck with Zen browser. I'd really want to be on Dia as I have much respect for its original creators, but Atlassian being behind it kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I even tried to import my Arc account into Dia to get everything done and dusted quickly, but it failed to do so, asked me to try again in a few minutes or contact Atlassian support...
Raed667 3 days ago [-]
> December 22: You will no longer be able to access or use Arc
Don't you love it when your browser has a remote kill switch ?
greenpizza13 3 days ago [-]
Nope, just not able to login and use the marv account.
Raed667 3 days ago [-]
From the FAQ "On December 22, 2026, Arc for macOS and Windows will stop working, and you will no longer be able to sign in to your Arc account"
jhaile 3 days ago [-]
I've tried switching from Arc to Dia several times over the past year and Dia was always significantly worse. I tried again today after the news.
The main features I miss from Arc are Peek, Air Traffic Control, and Nested Folders.
tuzemec 3 days ago [-]
Air Traffic Control is the thing that kept me on Arc.
wrxd 3 days ago [-]
Arc felt designed for the general public, Dia feels very much designed for a project manager that spends all of its day in web applications.
Even the login screen asked for “your work email”…
lxe 3 days ago [-]
https://helium.computer/ this is the browser I use now. it's basically ungoogled chromium without all the nonsense. It can run chrome extensions, unblock, doesn't have random unnecessary features, etc
aorth 3 days ago [-]
I have seen the Arc posts here and on r/browsers over the years so I am loosely familiar with it, but what is Dia? The post doesn't say and doesn't even link to it. Venture capital funded, closed source, and AI... doesn't sound good.
Posting from Ladybird BTW (compiled from git today), which is starting to take shape!
should have just open sourced arc instead of sunsetting it. dia feels incomplete.
i really liked tidy, clear, capture screenshots and other shortcuts. it felt a complete browser. maybe dia will eventually reach that stage - but its definitely not there.
asadotzler 3 days ago [-]
That assumes they give a fuck about the commons, which they clearly do not. Why do you hold these people up as if they were like us, decent and well motivated, when they're clearly misanthropic pieces of shit in it for themselves alone.
yamanahlawat 2 days ago [-]
amen! i was a heavy firefox user, switched to arc now tried zen, dia, chrome, firefox.. nothing feels the same.
arjie 3 days ago [-]
Enjoyed using it to start with but soon returned to Chrome. Now I have a personal browser/terminal hybrid I use. Lots of the ideas from arc were good. Sidebar tabs, splits, page editability.
yeutterg 3 days ago [-]
Curious about the terminal part of this!
arjie 3 days ago [-]
One could argue that what I really want is a tiling window manager with workspaces to swap around in, but really I want to keep my contexts separate and a command palette to swap between. e.g. https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/File:Screenshot_-_Convoke_be...
Obviously more interesting if I'd thought to screenshot prior to going to bed but you can have multiple tabs in a 'stream' and they can be terminal or web tabs. The relay (which I'm pentesting in the screenshot) transports the AI chats to a paired phone where they're adapted to have a common UI across the Claude / Codex / Oh My Pi that I use. You can obviously see the Arc lineage to the ideas here.
admjs 3 days ago [-]
As am I
HackerThemAll 3 days ago [-]
I found it funny that people use Chromium-based browsers and pretend they're unique.
If you want freedom, features and manifest v2 then just use and support Firefox.
SomeonesAccount 3 days ago [-]
They are unique. The UX of Arc was (and still is) MUCH, MUCH better than Chrome's. Or Firefox's. Or Helium's. Or Edge's.
eviks 3 days ago [-]
I want features that Firefox haven't managed to add in all its many years of existence. What'd your suggestion now?
Str1p3 3 days ago [-]
Why is a different browser with completely different UX that is using Chromium not unique?
HackerThemAll 3 days ago [-]
Yeah to me it's the wolf in grandma’s clothing.
wave84 3 days ago [-]
This is kinda sad, Arc was the perfect browser for me.
I wanted to give it a shot and download Dia, but cancelled the download when I noticed it was 861 MB large. That seems... absurd. For reference, the entire Windows 2000 installation kit was something like 370 MB. Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was 4.7 MB. Apples and oranges perhaps, but still, what is going on with software these days?
TingPing 3 days ago [-]
Of course there is bloat, but like high resolution assets alone of course are some MB.
stevenhubertron 3 days ago [-]
Arc was the only good product they had. What a self own. To see a company fall this hard is crazy. It will be studied like Perplexity.
davidd_1004 3 days ago [-]
I remember back when they launched a lot of people, myself included, were skeptical of their business model and the CEO told everyone not to worry about it. Turns out they were right lol
saharshpruthi 3 days ago [-]
Arc is being sunset on December 22, 2026. After that date, you won't be able to sign in to or use Arc. Please note that we will deactivate all Arc accounts on December 22. Once an account is deactivated, we will delete user personal data associated with the account within 30 days.
imglorp 3 days ago [-]
Did they force users to have an account to use a browser?
saharshpruthi 3 days ago [-]
Yes
asdfman123 3 days ago [-]
Sounds like they're really raiding the lost Arc
saharshpruthi 3 days ago [-]
Senseless.
shikshake 3 days ago [-]
I really enjoyed using arc years ago. But I also remember asking the devs, both on a livestream and over email, what their plan was to build a sustainable business. They obviously had no answer because their real plan was to entice users to join while surviving on VC funding, then eventually sell user data or squeeze value out of them some other way. Left a bad taste in my mouth so I stopped using their products.
Just another example of a cancerous VC-backed business.
Str1p3 3 days ago [-]
What are the other options to get funding to build a good revolutionary browser in this capitalist world?
jjuel 3 days ago [-]
So the new browser uses AI to read your tabs? No thanks!
juicypeach 3 days ago [-]
What makes you think they were not reading your tabs in Arc?
jjuel 3 days ago [-]
I guess I don't know. To be fair I didn't use Arc much since I was mostly on Linux. And haven't used it in maybe a year or so.
sandyarmstrong 3 days ago [-]
I thought this was about the backup software, which I still use on some of my systems, but had forgotten it's spelled "Arq" :-P
Why would you make an unnecessary transition, product name change, and negative PR for yourself like a confidence eroding “shutting down” blog post like this rather than releasing the new rearchitected browser as a major version update?
E.g., when Microsoft Edge moved to Chromium.
This marketing strategy basically tells potential users that this company might shut down their browsers at any time and that it’s not worth investing in their ecosystem.
whywhywhywhy 2 days ago [-]
It honestly reads like the company is shutting down, not "we're focusing on this other browser", really poorly done messaging.
impure 3 days ago [-]
Oh well, looks like I'm going to need a new browser. "Keeping a browser secure takes constant, dedicated work that is only increasing in the age of AI." I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.
As someone who loved Arc a lot and is still using it, this is sad to see. It also annoys me because they had such a clear path to success with such a huge head start. I was rooting for them. It was obvious there was an opportunity to build a much better browser, but the team couldn't figure out how to bring those changes into a browser we knew and were familiar with.
From my POV, it was mostly a product & design leadership failure. Ironic, because the team had phenomenal design and product work individually. They took a cheap way out with building a second browser, lost most of their userbase, and in doing so, admitted that users didn't want what they were building the way they were building it. It wasn't magical or intuitive, or else it would've been fine to build into Arc.
But instead of doing the hard overarching product & design work and making the tough calls, to build that roadmap step-by-step and add the magic, they decided they couldn't reconcile these two ideas into one, and needed two browsers.
One anecdote: Despite sharing mutual investors and connections with them, I never even heard back on any feature ideas or bug reports sent to the founder.
Str1p3 3 days ago [-]
The team was indeed phenomenal at what they did. But I don't think they ever figured how to get money from it.
yuanBuilds 3 days ago [-]
I am still using Arc as my daily browser even I know it is dying.
Arc Browser, for me, is the browser done right. It has all the UX details make browsing productive and satisfying. It is just very sad the browser company does not open source it.
At least at the last time I check, Zen still does not have all those subtleties.
I beleive there will be people build better UI for the coming ladybird browser, and please borrow from Arc.
yuanBuilds 3 days ago [-]
just realized they've put a free tier for Dia, and put back lots of Arc features to Dia. I guess that's why they decided to close Arc.
jdejean 2 days ago [-]
The apps have always shared a native UI codebase, there seems to be Dia innerworkings in Arc.app
They’re likely making this decision because no one’s using their AI, something Arc makes totally optional and invisible, and obviously that’s a big problem
Arc was never made for you and me. It was made for VCs to make a bunch of money exponentially, and because they failed, you get your workflow remotely deleted
christkv 3 days ago [-]
I have started to use Vivaldi a lot due to the it's built in profiles making it easy to test our application or having multiple instances open at the same time.
crab_galaxy 3 days ago [-]
This is honestly very sad news. The Arc UX is still my favorite desktop browser UX out there even to this day, even though feature development stopped over a year ago!
The auto-hiding sidebar, the pins, the smart folders, split tabs, command bar…
I will miss you Arc! Now to find a new browser ;(
gcanyon 3 days ago [-]
Is anyone going to talk about The Browser Company remotely yoinking Arc out of our hands? Granted we didn't buy it, but clearly we don't own it.
tech_ken 3 days ago [-]
Arc was a beautiful browser to use, but they lost a lot of my trust after that massive security vuln that they shipped as a silly customization feature
esafak 3 days ago [-]
I tried it briefly, but it just did not solve a pain point for me. I want my browser to be faster and lighter, not whatever Arc did.
IneffablePigeon 3 days ago [-]
Open source it, cowards
crizantlai 3 days ago [-]
It's expected when they announced stop developing new features for Arc.
It's too buggy since then, and I switched back to Brave browser.
After a few minutes I feel like horizontal tabs are actually better.
piazz 3 days ago [-]
I’ve been maining Dia for months. You can just turn off / ignore the AI crap and it’s great; just like Arc. I understand the allergy people have to it but I was pleasantly surprised.
aftbit 3 days ago [-]
RIP Arc 2023 -> 2026
I am no longer an early adopter for browsers. Firefox is just so darn good now (and I'm so used to it) that I don't feel a desire to try other stuff.
estetlinus 3 days ago [-]
Does Dia or Zen have an api I can point Claude Code to? It would be nice to sort tabs via Claude Code, that already has my context. Tried doing it with Firefox, but requires awkward workarounds.
sanderjd 3 days ago [-]
I wanted this for awhile, but actually now I kind of like having vanilla Chrome for browser automation only, and a different browser that I actually use.
BatchJob 3 days ago [-]
It was cute while it lasted. Felt gimmicky. Left after a while.
I enjoy side tabs now. As soon as the AI started I jumped off. Didnt figure Ar would last long. I was right.
tinyhouse 3 days ago [-]
Is this just the product Arc or the entire company? (The Browser Company)
joelboersma 3 days ago [-]
The Browser Company still exists developing Dia, after being acquired by Atlassian a while ago
juicypeach 3 days ago [-]
Just Arc browser. They still have Dia.
j45 3 days ago [-]
It's too bad, this had some nice features.
Hopefully it might get open sourced.
anthk 3 days ago [-]
We need more Servo based browsers, and maybe a free and deblobbed Chromium browser rewritten in Rust. Or, at least, the media and JS part.
structief 3 days ago [-]
Which browser alternative has the equivalent of "Little Arc"s? Damn, I've been looking all over.
asinglesprinkle 3 days ago [-]
Too bad I liked Arc a lot in the beginning but it was obviously out of favor for a while now
peterallport 3 days ago [-]
Such a needlessly disappointing decision. So much hard work went into the product and Arc had a great deal of promise. We'll definitely continue to see amazing efforts by designers, engineers, and others though in this space.
SomeonesAccount 3 days ago [-]
Looking forward to Radian browser, it looks like Arc but is made by an individual, not a company
Why do I see so many suggestions for Helium? It looks nothing like Arc. What am I missing?
zachwdc 3 days ago [-]
Arc users, what are you moving to?
mosselman 3 days ago [-]
I’ve built my own, Ariadne.
Nobody but me has it and it is great!
It has all the arc features except for the AI ones. It has nested tabs: when you open a tab from a tab it nests it underneath its parent. Infinitely.
I added right click menu items such as copying the urls of multiple selected tabs in one go, copying the urls of downloads, multi-part downloads. I am thinking of making downloading media from visited pages a first class citizen.
I’ve also optimised the memory usage for people like me with hundreds of tabs.
It has ad-blocking and fingerprint evasion built-in.
I am going to build in some markdown extraction features to quickly copy pages for my llms and maybe an mcp server for my local agent to read the web through. I’ll have to see though.
Having a browser work exactly how I want it is great. I have hotkeys that I need for things that weren’t possible for me before without hammerspoon.
I might release it at some point.
rglover 3 days ago [-]
> Nobody but me has it and it is great!
The zen of this position is severely underrated.
ValentineC 3 days ago [-]
How are you handling upstream updates?
mosselman 3 days ago [-]
Every night I update the browser from upstream and do a rebuild. It is a bit cumbersome right now as I have to run it on an SSD attached to my mac. The whole codebase requires quite a bit of storage that I don't have a maxed enough mac for.
I might look into being able to build it on a server at some point, but it works for me.
uriahlight 3 days ago [-]
Most Arc users have long since migrated to Zen. I personally have never liked either of them. It's hard to step away from Vivaldi. Although Vivaldi runs Chromium, it in 2026 is basically what Opera 12 was in 2016 (before they crippled the browser with the Chromium re-write). Vivaldi just has too many features. The only browser I've found that is comparable to Vivaldi's feature-set and customizability is Floorp.
jaffa2 3 days ago [-]
i too like vivaldi for the same reasons. i use brave, chrome for google stuff, firefox if i need a third browser but i use vivaldi mostly. except on mac where i still use safari
jotato 3 days ago [-]
I moved to the Helium browser several months ago.
juicypeach 3 days ago [-]
Same. I love it.
brzz 3 days ago [-]
n'thed
silvertab 3 days ago [-]
Crest (https://crestbrowser.com/) is a fairly new option that aims to bring most of Arc's features back. It still feels a bit immature but it does a lot already.
knes 3 days ago [-]
I've been on Helium for some time. it's great (for now)
3 days ago [-]
herunan 3 days ago [-]
Moved to Zen as soon as I noticed Arc went on maintenance mode. Never looked back.
johanyc 1 days ago [-]
I've moved to brave.
Ardakilic 3 days ago [-]
Helium browser. Never looked back.
mjazwiecki 3 days ago [-]
maybe good time to reverse engineer it using AI and then open source it?
odo1242 3 days ago [-]
I'm on Zen Browser
deppep 3 days ago [-]
once again, back to firefox
Ardakilic 3 days ago [-]
You could try Zen browser. It's like Arc, but Firefox based. Or if you like Chromium engine you could try Helium Browser, which I moved to personally and never looked back.
soulesidibe 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
NewJazz 3 days ago [-]
I wonder how much they spent on the domain. I guess they can sell it now lol.
terabytest 3 days ago [-]
Such a braindead move. You go to the Dia product page and it looks exactly the same as Arc. What’s the point? Just keep improving Arc. I know that back when they originally abandoned Arc, Dia looked like a generic Google Chrome clone with AI stapled on, but I cannot imagine what good reason they had at all to give up Arc and burn their entire user base along the way. I’m not a paying user, so I guess they don’t care about me after all.
julienb_sea 3 days ago [-]
Arc inspired me to use vertical tabs on Chrome and I am a big fan.
danxbuild 3 days ago [-]
i think brave and firefox have everything needed. personally using brave and havent seen any other browser that can compete with it.
dadrian 3 days ago [-]
At this point, everything I used in Arc is in Dia.
3 days ago [-]
nitroedge 3 days ago [-]
for the non-Anti-AI crowd, my agents like BrowserOS and I use it all the time
avazhi 3 days ago [-]
lol
Lmao even
Encapsulates enshittification in the current era really well, actually.
The lasting memory of these guys is how they refused to listen to their users. It was insane from the beginning how little they cared what their niche demographic even wanted. It got so bad so fast that after trying to get an invite and waiting a few months by the time I got invited it was already clearly a shit show and I didn’t even bother trialling it. The WeWork of browsers.
slantedview 3 days ago [-]
This is terrible news. As a longtime Arc user, Dia just doesn't cut it. Profiles aren't as good to use as spaces, and there's no way to share favorite tabs across profiles as there is with spaces. This is really a dealbreaker for tabs that you need to have open all day.
ghusto 3 days ago [-]
Another Apple Silicon only app, another pass. This one doesn't even do you the courtesy of informing you you're downloading an Apple Silicon only binary, just presumes you're not on Intel. I honestly don't understand the thinking behind not clicking the checkbox for the universal binary when compiling.
exabrial 2 days ago [-]
I wanted to use Arc. I downloaded it and it wanted me to sign up for an account. So I uninstalled.
Dumb. Browsers, Cars, TVs, should not require accounts.
sellmesoap 3 days ago [-]
Well that arc was shorter then I expected.
28304283409234 3 days ago [-]
well arctually....
pixeljam 3 days ago [-]
most interesting footgun ever
autosubtitles 3 days ago [-]
I think we knew this day would come, but disappointing nonetheless. Assuming Zen is the new favourite?
nekooooo 3 days ago [-]
Dia is terrible. Time for me to swtich to a different browser that has the sidebar tabs.
jhaile 3 days ago [-]
To be fair, they have added most of the Arc features into Dia now - the ones I still miss are Peek, Air Traffic Control, and Nested Folders (!?)
drewbeck 3 days ago [-]
Oh man I’m going to miss peek :(((
ramon156 3 days ago [-]
without sounding dense, can anyone tell me why i wouldve even considered trying Arc? just seemed like a hype train with no goal
Magicrafter13 3 days ago [-]
another proprietary browser gone? oh no! anyway.
VCFundedGenYer 2 days ago [-]
Yet another browser built out of the hype cycle with functionality that firmly and only belongs as a Firefox/Chrome extension.
Won't be missed.
marcogarces 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
an0malous 3 days ago [-]
Never trust a product that takes VC funding. Take advantage of the subsidized prices but have your backup ready.
allenleee 3 days ago [-]
Never trust a VC-backed founder who says, "don't worry ___ is not leaving"
Source: In his May 2025 open letter to Arc members and subsequent public statements, CEO Josh Miller reassured users that while active feature development was ending, Arc would be maintained indefinitely.
Indefinitely doesn't mean infinitely, it just means there is no defined end date at this particular moment. But that could change in the next moment, as it did.
pessimizer 3 days ago [-]
> Indefinitely doesn't mean infinitely
It's another example of how euphemisms are poison. "Indefinitely" has come to mean infinitely, because of people using it to mean infinitely. The first step to fraud is to come up with a euphemism for what you're doing, and on of the the smartest things to do is make that euphemism an already existing word that already meant something different.
Even better if that euphemism meant something more general that includes your meaning but isn't limited to your meaning. Or if it meant something totally different, but you want to eventually substitute your meaning with its original meaning within current laws or norms (see shoving the word "Open" or "Free" into software that are not associated with Open Source or Free Software.)
The law should be dealing with this, but Western governments have abandoned governance for patron-serving. If somebody says "indefinitely" when it comes to a product or service, and people are known to be confused by that term, they should simply be forced to clarify. Same for "own"/"buy", "unlimited," or any number of accepted lies that have become standard.
pphysch 3 days ago [-]
I agree it's confusing, but that's the point, it's a weasel word.
No court of law is going to accept an argument that indefinite == infinite, especially after it stops being indefinite (like TFA).
eviks 3 days ago [-]
Were you in a court of law when you made the previous comment? Was the CEO when he said it?
colesantiago 3 days ago [-]
> Never trust a product that takes VC funding.
There are almost no startups today that can survive if VC funding did not exist, even more so now that AI and LLMs exists.
Might as well not use any of them if they are funded by VCs or angel investors.
And if not, how should they be funded?
Donations? Not sustainable.
Lalabadie 3 days ago [-]
Sometimes I think I exaggerate how far into their own bubble the YC comments are.
vinyl7 3 days ago [-]
How about by making money like businesses used to do in the olden days
colesantiago 3 days ago [-]
Nope, Most people want services for free and now with vibe coding you can make your own.
Not sustainable for anyone wanting to charge for software.
c-hendricks 3 days ago [-]
And when VC services enshittify so that the VC funders can get their money back, the market won’t also respond with vibing their own version?
colesantiago 3 days ago [-]
Support and donate regularly to OSS or vibe code your own!
Unless of course you're Stripe (which is VC funded) we still need an OSS version of Stripe.
anothereng 3 days ago [-]
right it couldve been a small business charging 30$ per year to users
sandeepkd 3 days ago [-]
As of today the eco-system favors a VC backed company for visibility and more. Building a company itself is hard, bootstrapping it when there are VCs willing to fund you feels like an unnecessary risk.
Remember when all a browser had to do was browse? Yeah, good times.
frmersdog 3 days ago [-]
I feel no small amount of satisfaction and schadenfreude, considering how hard this thing was shilled by the usual "Apple supremacist" suspects.
tomhow 3 days ago [-]
> I feel no small amount of satisfaction and schadenfreude
Please don't fulminate or sneer (or whatever else this is) on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something much better than this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
frmersdog 3 days ago [-]
Respectfully, how am I supposed to feel and respond to a public call-out by a mod like this? (Over a -2, unflagged comment? Now I'm curious what nerve I hit.)
And to expound, in my defense: as a longtime Android device user, I recall often feeling stigmatized by the app developer community's treatment of things outside the Apple ecosystem as second-class. Arc's overly-enthusiastic media coverage, barely disclaiming or discounting that it was initially MacOS exclusive, reminded me of the worst of that from the mid-2010s. "Here is a product that is going to change the world, and give everyone superpowers, also you can't use it. :)"
I'd thought we'd left that behind.
So if this approach turned out to be a misstep that helped lead to the product's demise (alongside, bafflingly, and perhaps ultimately a bullet-dodge, the mere fact that a local browser can be sunset and locked at all), I'm not allowed to give my feelings on that? Is there really no productive conversation to be had about how a failed product rubbed potential users the wrong way?
tomhow 3 days ago [-]
If you’d written that (or, a version of that) as your initial comment, it would have been much better :)
A one line comment that contains the phrases “no small amount of satisfaction and schadenfreude” and "shilled by the usual 'Apple supremacist' suspects” has a sneery, snarly energy to it that’s clearly outside what the guidelines are asking of us.
> Now I'm curious what nerve I hit
It’s nothing to do with hitting a nerve (and really, the suggestion has a touch of pathologizing about it). This is bog standard moderation of the kind we‘ve done routinely for many years.
This site exists for curious conversation and substantive discussion of topics. Schadenfreude, which literally means taking pleasure in others' misfortune, is never what we want here. It's fine to criticize things. We just need you to do it thoughtfully and congenially.
https://zen-browser.app/
They picked up a lot of cues from Arc - sidebar tabs, pinned vs generic tabs, global bookmarks, spaces...
I’m pretty sure I saw more Arc videos posted after Dia than before. None of the people seemed to be aware that the browser they were pushing was effectively end of life.
Arc existed long before Dia, and had AI shoved into it when LLMs exploded, then the company decided to go all-in on an AI browser, Dia, and orphaned Arc...
Firefox is "copying" from Zen, and I think that's good. I do like Zen, but I wouldn't mind having all the features in Firefox (and imho some of the UI lately in Zen is... weird)
For my personal usage I find the deep nesting of TST to get in the way more than it helps and so the simpler model of Arc/Zen where nesting only happens intentionally is nice.
> even with the mods they're not as integrated as native vertical tabs.
Hmm what's Sidebery missing?
> Hmm what's Sidebery missing?
The extensions themselves aren't lacking, but they suffer from being extensions and not part of the browser proper, which makes for occasional weird interactions and glitches and the "seams" between extension and host becoming tangible from time to time. Things just work better when the browser "knows" about the tabs being vertical and having deeper organization than is possible with horizontal tab bars, or is even designed around vertical tabs being the only option (like Arc/Zen).
Sidebery can do the 80% of TST that matters, with a better UI and UX and saner defaults. Also it has a feature to save and restore all tabs, with the whole tree structure preserved (even though I think it should be its own extension)
Only problem is that I suspect that Sidebery has severe memory leaks (not entirely sure it's the culprit though)
You can add all the features, but you can't make them work well together (or look nice in some cases - which does matter!)
Firefox has those features now, that's all that matters. Not sure I wanna trust a solo dev on my daily browser, however competent they are.
- The distinction between pinned (soft-bookmarked) tabs and other tabs is very useful for me organizing things at work. (I didn't like when Arc added a setting to auto-delete other tabs X days after creating, though)
- Multiple "spaces" on the tab bar combined with global bookmarks at the top mean I can have a space for planning work and one for implementation work, and from both of those I have an easy link to Jira to search up tickets without needing to hop back and forth.
Being paid to not compete. That includes taking any sort of UI risk that would lead to evolution.
I switched to Brave, migrated in a few minutes literally and feel much better.
Arc was an alternative web browser with novel UX and AI features built-in. The company was acquired for $610 million by Atlassian and development was halted in favorite of Dia, another browser with AI features and novel UX (which I also had to look up)
Arc Development stopped (May 2025) - https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-browser-company-stops-active...
Acquisition (Sep 2025) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45126358
There is no AI in it so far as I can tell, and I'm using it right now to type this comment. It's a chromium skin really, of course, but it's great.
Anything else like Arc does too much. This is a true disappointment, coming from The Browser Company
As a bonus it's based on Firefox so uBlock Origin is available.
Indeed, doesn’t look good at all.
(Back when the headline was "Arc is Sunsetting". I am so 2 minutes ago.)
Dia now does appear now to have many of the Arc UX features. Plus AI.
Something is super, super fucked up with valuation of companies and the profiteering of late stage capitalism for stuff like that to be able to happen.
No wonder lots of people are saying the world feels worse than ever, everything's expensive and it seems in many ways we've regressed rather than "made things better for our children".
The closest thing right now is Orion. It does the vertical tabs and the page modification in the same way. Webkit based.
It's made by the Kagi guys who I really agree with - bootstrapped and not VC backed. A sustainable business. And charging for a service instead of making your customers the product. That's real ethics to me.
Their browser is not open source, though, which is a major blow. But it would seem most browsers are not truly now, if you look into it.
The reason I switched was because it is the only browser that, on iOS, allows chrome/firefox plugins. I'm not even sure how they're doing this as I thought banning non-crippled plugins was part of the 'device is not mine' policy from Apple. But it's there. All my plugins. Including the ones I made myself.
I realize this sounds like an Ad. Not affiliated. I just think they're doing good stuff.
https://orionbrowser.com/
https://blog.kagi.com/update-orion-linux-windows
Last time I checked Orion was the only decent solution with at least some ad block capabilities.
Bacause I don’t want to be pushed towards a $100 per month plan where the «key feature» is an AI morning brief.
https://www.diabrowser.com/plans
/EDIT: I looked into this by... well, asking Dia:
> That fits what I described. You aren't on a plan because you haven't had to pick one yet. People who were using Dia before paid plans launched on August 17 kept the AI features for free, with nothing to choose and no card on file. Dia says it will email those users at least 30 days before that changes.
>
> So nothing's wrong. It just isn't permanently free either. It's free for now because you joined early. When the notice email comes, you'll have about a month to decide:
So I'm grandfathered "for now", but the Daily brief and AI features are so low value to me, I just assumed they're free for everyone because of how little they do. I never use the built-in AI in Dia and get annoyed when a query that I wanted to go to a search engine gets answered by the assistant instead.
You can get Claude Pro for $20/month and if you hook it into a browser, I'm not sure what you'd be missing out on from those listed perks.
I mean I get the benefit of a prepackaged experience but not at 5x the cost.
https://zen-browser.app/
It's picked up all the most important parts of Arc's design while leaving behind the bits that were questionable (such as TBC's decision to not have bookmarks) and at this point it's pretty solid.
I had been continuing to use Arc for the odd site that insists on something Chromium-based (usually without good reason) since it's the only chromeclone that feels somewhat at home on macOS and hasn't succumb to an ugly generic flat look. It'll be missed.
For a while Arc was my main, but I switched to Orion when it was announced that Arc was going on maintenance mode. Since then I've waffled between Orion and Safari.
The only reason I can figure out is that they decided the technical foundations were just wrong, which would be surprising because they put an astonishing amount of work into building some very specific technical foundations for Arc.
Now that Chrome has native vertical tabs I'm back on Chrome, but I do miss Arc's tab tidying and organisation.
Dia has sidebar tabs now, but it feels half baked, and the AI Chat button is an annoyingly permanent ads.
Nook was interesting for 30sec, but you will soon find out it's just not done.
RIP Arc, there's no match, I'll miss you.
1 - https://supasidebar.com 2 - https://loshadki.app/openin4/
I’m still pulling for Atlassian to do Interesting Things with the app. AI can be part of it but I think there’s a ton of opportunity for a browser for the enterprise / organizations and atlassian is well positioned to do that, AI or no. Things like: - shared company file Management accessible directly in app - cross saas–app workflows enabled at the browser level, managed centrally by the org — slack, zoom, screen sharing/recording and other collab tools natively baked into the app
So many people spend all their work day flipping between different apps and docs in the browser and there’s sooo much more we (as humanity) could do to improve that experience. The browser is a natural site for it and I hope someone gives it a shot.
Dia is a joke.
After a year to cool off, I gave Dia a shot. Despite wanting to hate it, I like the browser a lot. You can turn off the shit AI features, and it's a well designed and thoughtful UX.
As much as Josh is a tool, this is genuinely a great product and the team at TBC has executed really well.
did you really have to include that? without substantiation this is just a mean offhand side swipe.
They are trying to add Arc features into Dia, but its an afterthought. I used it for a month and came back, it was not a good experience.
I've been using Arc on my personal laptop and phone exclusively for a couple years now, and want a more informed reason to or not to invest in moving over to Dia.
But that's why I personally liked it, it was for a power user. Having multiple profiles, and a clean working environment, a lot of small but smart really thought out features. It felt like a actual revolutionary product.
In Dia there is a constant menu bar, for instance to make it easier for users. But it spoils the whole clean experience of Arc.
Dia seems to be just for mainstream, I can understand giving the focus to Dia, but removing Arc seems to be foolish. Especially when so many people are still using it.
Dia is focused more on AI tools, and seems to be more distracting for me, the focus seems to be to sell us a subscription, it feels quite different from the straightforward feature rich, power user browsers, which was Arc.
If you do, and you regularly tile windows, you know that vertical tabs are terrible because if you have 2 browser windows and tile them side-by-side, suddenly 40% of your screen is wasted showing tabs on 2 windows.
I really don't want to learn an entirely different set of multitasking shortcuts just for my browser. I know how to multitask with my browser already, the same way I multitask with everything else, and none of the solutions seem more convenient.
Most browsers try to port the vertical tabs or the split view and proudly say "look, we did it, you can now switch from Arc" but none get this tab concept right, except for Zen which regrettably uses Firefox/Gecko as its base.
Don't you love it when your browser has a remote kill switch ?
The main features I miss from Arc are Peek, Air Traffic Control, and Nested Folders.
Even the login screen asked for “your work email”…
Posting from Ladybird BTW (compiled from git today), which is starting to take shape!
Letter to Arc Members 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44102709
i really liked tidy, clear, capture screenshots and other shortcuts. it felt a complete browser. maybe dia will eventually reach that stage - but its definitely not there.
Obviously more interesting if I'd thought to screenshot prior to going to bed but you can have multiple tabs in a 'stream' and they can be terminal or web tabs. The relay (which I'm pentesting in the screenshot) transports the AI chats to a paired phone where they're adapted to have a common UI across the Claude / Codex / Oh My Pi that I use. You can obviously see the Arc lineage to the ideas here.
If you want freedom, features and manifest v2 then just use and support Firefox.
Just another example of a cancerous VC-backed business.
https://www.arqbackup.com/
E.g., when Microsoft Edge moved to Chromium.
This marketing strategy basically tells potential users that this company might shut down their browsers at any time and that it’s not worth investing in their ecosystem.
From my POV, it was mostly a product & design leadership failure. Ironic, because the team had phenomenal design and product work individually. They took a cheap way out with building a second browser, lost most of their userbase, and in doing so, admitted that users didn't want what they were building the way they were building it. It wasn't magical or intuitive, or else it would've been fine to build into Arc.
But instead of doing the hard overarching product & design work and making the tough calls, to build that roadmap step-by-step and add the magic, they decided they couldn't reconcile these two ideas into one, and needed two browsers.
One anecdote: Despite sharing mutual investors and connections with them, I never even heard back on any feature ideas or bug reports sent to the founder.
Arc Browser, for me, is the browser done right. It has all the UX details make browsing productive and satisfying. It is just very sad the browser company does not open source it.
At least at the last time I check, Zen still does not have all those subtleties.
I beleive there will be people build better UI for the coming ladybird browser, and please borrow from Arc.
They’re likely making this decision because no one’s using their AI, something Arc makes totally optional and invisible, and obviously that’s a big problem
Arc was never made for you and me. It was made for VCs to make a bunch of money exponentially, and because they failed, you get your workflow remotely deleted
The auto-hiding sidebar, the pins, the smart folders, split tabs, command bar…
I will miss you Arc! Now to find a new browser ;(
I am no longer an early adopter for browsers. Firefox is just so darn good now (and I'm so used to it) that I don't feel a desire to try other stuff.
Hopefully it might get open sourced.
Nobody but me has it and it is great!
It has all the arc features except for the AI ones. It has nested tabs: when you open a tab from a tab it nests it underneath its parent. Infinitely.
I added right click menu items such as copying the urls of multiple selected tabs in one go, copying the urls of downloads, multi-part downloads. I am thinking of making downloading media from visited pages a first class citizen.
I’ve also optimised the memory usage for people like me with hundreds of tabs.
It has ad-blocking and fingerprint evasion built-in.
I am going to build in some markdown extraction features to quickly copy pages for my llms and maybe an mcp server for my local agent to read the web through. I’ll have to see though.
Having a browser work exactly how I want it is great. I have hotkeys that I need for things that weren’t possible for me before without hammerspoon.
I might release it at some point.
The zen of this position is severely underrated.
I might look into being able to build it on a server at some point, but it works for me.
Lmao even
Encapsulates enshittification in the current era really well, actually.
The lasting memory of these guys is how they refused to listen to their users. It was insane from the beginning how little they cared what their niche demographic even wanted. It got so bad so fast that after trying to get an invite and waiting a few months by the time I got invited it was already clearly a shit show and I didn’t even bother trialling it. The WeWork of browsers.
Dumb. Browsers, Cars, TVs, should not require accounts.
Won't be missed.
Source: In his May 2025 open letter to Arc members and subsequent public statements, CEO Josh Miller reassured users that while active feature development was ending, Arc would be maintained indefinitely.
https://www.theverge.com/news/674603/arc-browser-development...
It's another example of how euphemisms are poison. "Indefinitely" has come to mean infinitely, because of people using it to mean infinitely. The first step to fraud is to come up with a euphemism for what you're doing, and on of the the smartest things to do is make that euphemism an already existing word that already meant something different.
Even better if that euphemism meant something more general that includes your meaning but isn't limited to your meaning. Or if it meant something totally different, but you want to eventually substitute your meaning with its original meaning within current laws or norms (see shoving the word "Open" or "Free" into software that are not associated with Open Source or Free Software.)
The law should be dealing with this, but Western governments have abandoned governance for patron-serving. If somebody says "indefinitely" when it comes to a product or service, and people are known to be confused by that term, they should simply be forced to clarify. Same for "own"/"buy", "unlimited," or any number of accepted lies that have become standard.
No court of law is going to accept an argument that indefinite == infinite, especially after it stops being indefinite (like TFA).
There are almost no startups today that can survive if VC funding did not exist, even more so now that AI and LLMs exists.
Might as well not use any of them if they are funded by VCs or angel investors.
And if not, how should they be funded?
Donations? Not sustainable.
Not sustainable for anyone wanting to charge for software.
Unless of course you're Stripe (which is VC funded) we still need an OSS version of Stripe.
Remember when all a browser had to do was browse? Yeah, good times.
Please don't fulminate or sneer (or whatever else this is) on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something much better than this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And to expound, in my defense: as a longtime Android device user, I recall often feeling stigmatized by the app developer community's treatment of things outside the Apple ecosystem as second-class. Arc's overly-enthusiastic media coverage, barely disclaiming or discounting that it was initially MacOS exclusive, reminded me of the worst of that from the mid-2010s. "Here is a product that is going to change the world, and give everyone superpowers, also you can't use it. :)"
I'd thought we'd left that behind.
So if this approach turned out to be a misstep that helped lead to the product's demise (alongside, bafflingly, and perhaps ultimately a bullet-dodge, the mere fact that a local browser can be sunset and locked at all), I'm not allowed to give my feelings on that? Is there really no productive conversation to be had about how a failed product rubbed potential users the wrong way?
A one line comment that contains the phrases “no small amount of satisfaction and schadenfreude” and "shilled by the usual 'Apple supremacist' suspects” has a sneery, snarly energy to it that’s clearly outside what the guidelines are asking of us.
> Now I'm curious what nerve I hit
It’s nothing to do with hitting a nerve (and really, the suggestion has a touch of pathologizing about it). This is bog standard moderation of the kind we‘ve done routinely for many years.
This site exists for curious conversation and substantive discussion of topics. Schadenfreude, which literally means taking pleasure in others' misfortune, is never what we want here. It's fine to criticize things. We just need you to do it thoughtfully and congenially.