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.
FF4L
Throws up gang signs
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.
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.
Not a paid shill, but I am a shill lol
I’m interested but I’m wary. They have their series A funding but… what’s the end goal here? How are they going to monetize this?
Not sure but you can’t even use the browser without giving them an email address and creating an account. Thought that was a bit off.
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.
Yeah that’s not instilling confidence but I’ll check the YT. Thanks
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.
It’s still based on Chromium
Welp.
