alt Hacker NewsA farewell to Arc browser
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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)
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.
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'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.
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!
1 - https://supasidebar.com 2 - https://loshadki.app/openin4/
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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”…
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.
Arc inspired me to use vertical tabs on Chrome and I am a big fan.
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.
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!
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.
I wonder how much they spent on the domain. I guess they can sell it now lol.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Open source it, cowards
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.
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.
I think we knew this day would come, but disappointing nonetheless. Assuming Zen is the new favourite?
Why do I see so many suggestions for Helium? It looks nothing like Arc. What am I missing?
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.
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.
Looking forward to Radian browser, it looks like Arc but is made by an individual, not a company
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 ;(
It's too bad, this had some nice features.
Hopefully it might get open sourced.
another proprietary browser gone? oh no! anyway.
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.
most interesting footgun ever
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.
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.
Is this just the product Arc or the entire company? (The Browser Company)
Previously in May 2025:
Letter to Arc Members 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44102709
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).
https://zen-browser.app/
They picked up a lot of cues from Arc - sidebar tabs, pinned vs generic tabs, global bookmarks, spaces...