I’ve used Arc as my main browser on my work laptop for the last few months and I love it! It solves pain points I’ve actively tried to solve with Firefox, but couldn’t.
It’s no surprise HN is skeptical about « yet another browser », so here’s what I like specifically about Arc:
- it supports tab tiling. I can see 2 tabs next to one another easily. This is NOT solved with window tiling, it’s clunky and clutters the space.
- it’s vertical tab support is good, and beautiful. Firefox also has vertical tabs via Sidebery and TreeStyleTab, but it’s pretty awful. It hacks on side panels to implement something looking like tabs, but the look and feel honestly sucks
- theming is very easy and beautiful. Also it works by « space »
- lots features dedicated to avoiding tab cluttering:
1. Tabs can auto close when inactive
2. Links that should open a new tab don’t open a new tab by default, they open a pop-in that I can expand to a dedicated tab if I want
3. Links outside of Arc (in a mail client, in a terminal…) don’t open a new tab, they open in a unique Arc window (Little Arc), and I can expand them in a dedicated tab if I want
4. Spaces and profiles allow to organize the tabs properly
- it also integrates with a few websites, for example it can display infos directly on some non-open tabs. On my GitHub tabs, it shows the number of PRs awaiting my review. If I hover on my Google Agenda tab, it display a small agenda for the day without opening a tab
I’m sure I forget a few things that I like. None of these features individually would make me switch to Arc, but seeing all of it at once made me try it, and I don’t regret it.
Arc is pretty good. The vertical tabs are great, and the same tab list appears in all other windows you have open. For someone who easily loses track of tabs, this helps dramatically, and prevents the situation where you have multiple windows open, each with similar tabs.
The other great feature is the "Little Arc" window that appears when opening links in other apps. This lets you check something out, close the window, and resume what you were doing, preventing you from getting sucked into the Web and away from the conversation you were having.
I don't find much else compelling, but these are both really nice. For some reason, I don't care at all about the tiling system or the Boosts feature (modifying pages to remove elements, change fonts, etc) even though people talk about those a lot. If they can think of one or two more really useful features (and communicate them properly on the website) then they'll gain a lot of users.
At least, they'll gain a lot of users on the Mac. The biggest downside is the lack of Windows and Linux support. They're working on Windows. I don't see them doing Linux at all, but who knows.
Why wouldn't they do Linux? Isn't the whole benefit of browsers that they're the internet's compatibility layer, and shouldn't support be kinda baked into Chromium? Missing a chunk of (hopefully passionate in a good way) users like that sounds like a missed opportunity.
That said it's probably fine for them to iterate for Mac customers first, like apps releasing on iOS first before supporting Android.
Curious, what display/screen size are you mostly using?
I find TST quite hard to use on a Macbook / Laptop screen... it's much better on a bigger screen though, and best when using a second/separate display/window for it.
To be clear maybe the term « awful » was a bit harsh, I don’t want to shit on TST/Sidebery, I know the limitations they face on Firefox. I said it multiple times, but I’m mad that seeing the relative success of TST/Sidebery in their add on catalog, Mozilla didn’t invest anything in experience around vertical tabs, and tabs in general. Arc is fundamentally a big rethinking of what tabs should/could be in a browser.
Why would you want your browser to manage themes and window management (tiling, links outside of web) while it is the job of the OS/desktop environment?
Part of the reason is that this is a macOS browser. macOS's window management is a joke. But I think I'd use the tab tiling on Linux too, I do a lot of work with tiled browser windows and it's great, but also sucks when you want to have a window very small horizontally and the browser's UI gets squished along with any extension menus you're trying to use. Arc doesn't have that problem, you always have access to the full UI.
Doesn't that argument apply to tabs also? Eg IE6 days where there were no tabs, and everything was deferred to the OS/desktop window management. It was clunky and painful.
I think tab tilling in Arc is only good if you use ultrawide screen and/or stay in browser for your workflow, other wise it's yet another layer of window management (windows, tabs, tiles in windows) you have to remember.
When you use smaller screen it would be good if instead of resizing the tiles to try to fit the sreen, maybe keep them the same size but alow horizontal scroll to go through them?
With Firefox on macOS and to a lesser extent Windows there’s some jank at play, for example when hiding/showing the sidebar you sometimes see a white flash as it redraws. It feels a bit duct taped together.
In case you are interested in a wrapper for WebKit instead of for Chromium, but one that lets you use your favorite Chrome and Firefox extensions:
Orion Browser by Kagi: Very fast. Zero telemetry.
Lightweight, natively built with WebKit, made for you and your Mac. Industry-leading battery life, privacy respecting by design and native support for web extensions.
Orion supports Firefox and Chrome browser extensions natively. Whether you prefer getting them from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-Ons... as well as bringing support for as many as we can to iOS…
You can use a network capture util and will find that there is no telemetry. There’s an update check but you can disable it.
Don’t think it’s much different to use a closed source application than it is to use an open source app that somebody else compiled and put into your systems package repository.
Orion and Kagi (subscription search engine) are both great products, been using them for over a year, though I main FF.
This is great, with the one big annoyance that they don't use the actual native iCloud password keychain (and so, for example, can't interop with how that's also used to auto-fill passwords for apps on iOS, not just websites).
That is a deal breaker for me. I use auto-fill extensively and my browsing is 50/50 Mac and iPad so having a separate set of passwords on Mac and iPad is super annoying.
I tried Orion a while ago: in that version background tabs with YouTube on pause made the bottom of my m1 air get very hot. I really liked that it supported chrome extensions but battery life was not great. I’ll give it another go now that I’ve been using arc for some time.
There's value on the wrapper around the rendering engine. Presumably you don't use the raw engine, and use many of the UX features provided by your chosen wrapper (of which there are many). Things like tabs and extensions, hell even having history,
settings, cookies, and a back button are UX niceties a raw engine doesn't necessarily provide. So the wrapper is important; making a better wrapper is thus a worthwhile endeavor. Extensions only go so far, and if ManifestV3 ever lands, and stops ad-blocking extensions from functioning, it's easy to see a hypothetical consumer-focused browser that restored that functionality, or had it natively would easily be worth millions.
The only question is if they can actually make money, and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that. Opera, the browser company had revenue of around $380 million last quarter, but if you don't use their browser, which is also "just" a chrome wrapper, you'd never know it.
To put it another way, Linux distros; Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc, are all "just" wrappers around the Linux Kernel. Yet "I made a Linux Kernel wrapper" is worth at least a billion, in the case of Red Hat. If you never come near that distro, you might not even see a reason for its value, but you can't argue with their sales numbers.
I understand this reaction, but you're missing the point. It's precisely that the rendering engine is not what drives value; it's what you build on top of that sediment layer.
Why do people care so much about the rendering engine? They are also basically the same for most websites people actually care about, the important part is the UI.
That being said I’d strongly prefer the native WebKit be used since it wouldn’t make the thing 300mb.
Lots of things are built on FOSS components. How many appliances are built on nix-with-an-app? Are they just wrappers? What about Linux distros themselves, or all nix flavors and distros?
The value, in this case, is in the UI. The engine is a commodity.
The value isn't in the browser engine, it's in the implementation and the user experience.
I don't love Arc -- I bounced off it pretty fast -- but it's not insane to think that a VC would see the reuse of the most common browser engine as a good thing, as it means less work on the part of the developers and more of a focus on what sets the browser apart.
> A browser, un no circumstances, should be log-in walled.
Why? Not that Arc does this, but in today's modern world, we're two device creatures; a smartphone and a laptop. How do you connect the two if not with some sort of login?
In my view, the name "The Browser Company of New York" feels cheerful and evokes an old-timey, skilled craftsmen feel. They do care a lot about storytelling and their brand, and their relationship to their users.
It should not be required if you do not want sync across devices, bug reports, etc (or if you just want to copy the configuration by yourself instead). However, apparently it requires anyways, and that is no good. It also should not require an internet connection if you are only going to view local files and/or LAN.
Their website still doesn't tell me anything useful enough about the browser to let me know if it's something that would interest me. It's all just marketing-speak.
This has been my primary issue with Arc. I can't tell what it is and the copy on the website reads like it comes from the world's most pretentious designer. I feel like any tech blogger covering this can't be taken seriously when they say "I just decided to give Arc a try because of how it looks" when there were 0 pictures on the website and the intro heading was literally "Arc is a browser". Okay Arc.
Agreed. I don't use a Mac anymore, but I've been hearing about this browser and how excellent it is, but their website does such an awful job of conveying anything that I'm surprised anyone ever started using it. Actually, to give them some credit, they seem to have redone the site somewhat, and it now actually has screenshots. Last time I visited it barely had a description of the product, so I guess they're headed in the right direction.
Everything about this browser reminds me of Apple's product pages. All marketing speak, vague, empty promises, and loads of hype everywhere for things I'm doing already on what I have right now.
It worked for Apple so I can't blame them for trying, but it makes the entire thing feel so empty.
It looks like someone mashed the basic features Microsoft built into Edge into a a frame around Webkit with one or two cool features.
I don't want to go all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 but Microsoft Edge seems to be doing most of the features this browser seems to have and more, and it's from a software company I expect to still exist in five years.
Can't watch video right now, but the blog isn't helpful. I just want to know about the browser, not all the navel-gazing around the browser. But, since another commenter mentioned you need an account to use the browser at all, it doesn't matter anyway.
What's the point with a bunch of information when you can just download it and try for yourself? If you're at the car dealership, don't you want to take a car for a test ride first, before getting into more details?
Because you want to know what it is like before installing it? From what I gather so far this is not an executable I trust and feel comfortable running on my personal computer.
The best way to learn about a browser is to use it. No article is going to convey whether it will feel right to you. If needing an account is a dealbreaker, the consider the deal broken and move on. I've tried out a bunch of browsers over the past year, and Arc has been my default for a few months now. Being able to easily swipe between sandboxed profiles is great, and I like the rest of the UI. They also have a YouTube channel[1] that will give you some idea of how it behaves; scroll to the earlier ones.
- "We never sell your data, and we’ll only share it in the following circumstances: With our Service Providers" O yeah they don't sell just share ... (with a list of what a Service provider may be but not what it may not be).
- "Why do we collect personal data? Protect against fraud" strange would have not listed that first.
And no amount of using it will change anything for those points.
> So what we are supposed to shut up and move on ?
Only if you have better things to do. I've personally cleared my day to work on a "CharlesW DESTROYS Arc Browser SaaS Model for 43 Minutes" YouTube response.
I just mean that some people will value things like being able to sync their browser sidebar, and won't be bothered by needing an account to do so, and some people will never do that. If you're of the latter sort, then Arc isn't for you.
A browser that requires an account to use? No thanks.
The "why do i need an account" popup doesn't properly explain it to me either, syncing should be optional - let me use, or at least try, it without an account first.
Why? Of course so they can have their "registered users" count as high as possible to get another round of VC funding, so that they can drag this thing all the way to the IPO and get a nice and fat exit :)
Readit News
It’s no surprise HN is skeptical about « yet another browser », so here’s what I like specifically about Arc:
- it supports tab tiling. I can see 2 tabs next to one another easily. This is NOT solved with window tiling, it’s clunky and clutters the space.
- it’s vertical tab support is good, and beautiful. Firefox also has vertical tabs via Sidebery and TreeStyleTab, but it’s pretty awful. It hacks on side panels to implement something looking like tabs, but the look and feel honestly sucks
- theming is very easy and beautiful. Also it works by « space »
- lots features dedicated to avoiding tab cluttering:
1. Tabs can auto close when inactive
2. Links that should open a new tab don’t open a new tab by default, they open a pop-in that I can expand to a dedicated tab if I want
3. Links outside of Arc (in a mail client, in a terminal…) don’t open a new tab, they open in a unique Arc window (Little Arc), and I can expand them in a dedicated tab if I want
4. Spaces and profiles allow to organize the tabs properly
- it also integrates with a few websites, for example it can display infos directly on some non-open tabs. On my GitHub tabs, it shows the number of PRs awaiting my review. If I hover on my Google Agenda tab, it display a small agenda for the day without opening a tab
I’m sure I forget a few things that I like. None of these features individually would make me switch to Arc, but seeing all of it at once made me try it, and I don’t regret it.
Also their release notes are fun to read.
The other great feature is the "Little Arc" window that appears when opening links in other apps. This lets you check something out, close the window, and resume what you were doing, preventing you from getting sucked into the Web and away from the conversation you were having.
I don't find much else compelling, but these are both really nice. For some reason, I don't care at all about the tiling system or the Boosts feature (modifying pages to remove elements, change fonts, etc) even though people talk about those a lot. If they can think of one or two more really useful features (and communicate them properly on the website) then they'll gain a lot of users.
At least, they'll gain a lot of users on the Mac. The biggest downside is the lack of Windows and Linux support. They're working on Windows. I don't see them doing Linux at all, but who knows.
That said it's probably fine for them to iterate for Mac customers first, like apps releasing on iOS first before supporting Android.
Deleted Comment
Firefox forever, yo! Whitest guy ever tries to make an F gang sign with his fingers
Last year I've used Sideberry extensively. It has some nifty features that TST does not have.
Do these two extensions look native to their host OS? Nope. I can live with that if don't need to use another closed source Chrome clone.
Curious, what display/screen size are you mostly using?
I find TST quite hard to use on a Macbook / Laptop screen... it's much better on a bigger screen though, and best when using a second/separate display/window for it.
To be clear maybe the term « awful » was a bit harsh, I don’t want to shit on TST/Sidebery, I know the limitations they face on Firefox. I said it multiple times, but I’m mad that seeing the relative success of TST/Sidebery in their add on catalog, Mozilla didn’t invest anything in experience around vertical tabs, and tabs in general. Arc is fundamentally a big rethinking of what tabs should/could be in a browser.
I think tab tilling in Arc is only good if you use ultrawide screen and/or stay in browser for your workflow, other wise it's yet another layer of window management (windows, tabs, tiles in windows) you have to remember.
When you use smaller screen it would be good if instead of resizing the tiles to try to fit the sreen, maybe keep them the same size but alow horizontal scroll to go through them?
I wrote a custom stylesheet for Tree Style Tab years ago. Did you do this, and if so, what did you find lacking afterwards?
Orion Browser by Kagi: Very fast. Zero telemetry.
Lightweight, natively built with WebKit, made for you and your Mac. Industry-leading battery life, privacy respecting by design and native support for web extensions.
Orion supports Firefox and Chrome browser extensions natively. Whether you prefer getting them from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-Ons... as well as bringing support for as many as we can to iOS…
https://browser.kagi.com/
Q: Is Orion open-source?
A: We’re working on it!...[0]
Q: Is Orion truly safe if it’s not open-source?
A: The idea that "open-source = trustworthy" only goes so far...[1]
[0] https://browser.kagi.com/faq.html#oss
[1] https://browser.kagi.com/faq.html#ossprivacy
Don’t think it’s much different to use a closed source application than it is to use an open source app that somebody else compiled and put into your systems package repository.
Orion and Kagi (subscription search engine) are both great products, been using them for over a year, though I main FF.
[0] https://www.falkon.org/
Dead Comment
> Agrawal decided early on not to try and rebuild the whole browser stack, and based Arc on Chromium like everyone else.
Ladybird this ain't. More like YACI (yet another chromium implementation).
The only question is if they can actually make money, and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that. Opera, the browser company had revenue of around $380 million last quarter, but if you don't use their browser, which is also "just" a chrome wrapper, you'd never know it.
To put it another way, Linux distros; Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc, are all "just" wrappers around the Linux Kernel. Yet "I made a Linux Kernel wrapper" is worth at least a billion, in the case of Red Hat. If you never come near that distro, you might not even see a reason for its value, but you can't argue with their sales numbers.
That being said I’d strongly prefer the native WebKit be used since it wouldn’t make the thing 300mb.
The value, in this case, is in the UI. The engine is a commodity.
I don't love Arc -- I bounced off it pretty fast -- but it's not insane to think that a VC would see the reuse of the most common browser engine as a good thing, as it means less work on the part of the developers and more of a focus on what sets the browser apart.
What's more absurd to me would be to use it because it's pretty and has vertical tabs as if it was the features pitched to raise money ...
A browser, un no circumstances, should be log-in walled.
Seemed like a great user experience as a browser, but unfortunately I uninstalled it as soon as I launched it to a sign in screen.
It does? Well, that's a showstopper right there. At least I know I can safely ignore this browser from here on out, though. Thank you!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086116
Why? Not that Arc does this, but in today's modern world, we're two device creatures; a smartphone and a laptop. How do you connect the two if not with some sort of login?
> Why do we collect personal data? > Protect against fraud, or implement additional security measures.
Another play on the verified human angle ?
Requires sign in on launch... https://i.imgur.com/89Oegnf.jpeg
from real people, or probably-paid articles on tech blogs?
It worked for Apple so I can't blame them for trying, but it makes the entire thing feel so empty.
It looks like someone mashed the basic features Microsoft built into Edge into a a frame around Webkit with one or two cool features.
I don't want to go all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 but Microsoft Edge seems to be doing most of the features this browser seems to have and more, and it's from a software company I expect to still exist in five years.
https://browsercompany.substack.com/archive
https://www.youtube.com/@TheBrowserCompany
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@TheBrowserCompany/videos
Not criticize that :
- "won´t ever sell your data" is an empty promise
- "We never sell your data, and we’ll only share it in the following circumstances: With our Service Providers" O yeah they don't sell just share ... (with a list of what a Service provider may be but not what it may not be).
- "Why do we collect personal data? Protect against fraud" strange would have not listed that first.
And no amount of using it will change anything for those points.
Especially if they don't mention who do they milk money from. You'd have to be very naive to install this.
Only if you have better things to do. I've personally cleared my day to work on a "CharlesW DESTROYS Arc Browser SaaS Model for 43 Minutes" YouTube response.
The "why do i need an account" popup doesn't properly explain it to me either, syncing should be optional - let me use, or at least try, it without an account first.