Arc was G.O.A.T But it's Time to Move On

The last several years I've been a card carrying member of the Browser Company Fanatic's club. Pretending to nod along in whatever discussion is happening waiting for the perfect moment to interject with "yeah but just use Arc it's the best browser ever made". To which the response is usually something like "Sir this is a Wendy's".

And I stand by my techno-missionary past in sincerity, albeit the democratization I've pushed may have come across as somewhat pushy. So it's probably no surprise that when Browser Company announced Dia (and that Arc 2.0 wasn't coming), I sighed and groaned, and drug my feet. And now I feel like the old guy at the back of the concert who's screaming "yeah but you really should have listened to their first album before they sold out".

Vertical Tabs Did Nothing Wrong

When it all comes down to it, horizontal tabs were a mistake. Arc took me a few hours to get used to, but as soon as it clicked I realized I was 100% bought in. If you work at a desk, chances are your day starts with something like one tab open, and ends with dozens of mostly useless tabs open, collecting contextual dust from early hours in the day, each indistinguishable from the last. And while nearly everyone is used to working this way, once you realize you can organize your browsing experience without relying on bookmarks & illegible pins, there's no going back. So what did Arc get right about the sidebar?

1. Pinning the most important tabs to the top left of the screen in a grid like pattern.
2. Nesting and organizing less important "bookmarks" much in the same way that most people organize slack channels.
3. A mental model surrounding tabs that proves that closing a tab does not always mean making that tab disappear forever, but that the tab likely needs to be collapsed to minimize distraction.

Fit & Finish 🤌

I've never used a browser that sweats the small stuff as much as Arc. There were so many comfortable cozy quality of life adjustments to the browsing experience like:

1. Automatic tidying of loose unpinned tabs each day when you close up shop.
2. The command palette interface surrounding search (command palettes rock, they are an amazing affordance and should be used more across the board).
3. Opening up links in a "mini preview window" before opening up a brand new window altogether.
4. Power user keyboard shortcuts that make sharing links so easy you'll never want to do things the old way ever again.
5. Profiles that help you not only group your tabs, but properly segment them for privacy reasons so that annoying cookies don't follow you everywhere you go (looking at you LinkedIn & Google).

Let's Talk About Dia

At the end of the day, I'm still rooting for Browser Company's success. So when they finally opened up their Dia beta to Arc users, I decided to download the new browser in good faith and give it a shot. And hey, the marketing seemed pretty good. An AI focused browsing experience that aims to re-define the way we use browsers entirely? Okay cool. Why not give it a shot. I'm willing to shake things up.

But what was promised and what's currently there left me feeling, well... whelmed.

Dia promises to be this AI forward, super-powered browser. Built from the ground up with a different browsing experience in mind. But the UX today is largely a Safari clone with an AI chat thread on the right hand side of the screen. While that value proposition in and of itself does have utility, it feels like it's releasing in a way that's already somewhat behind. On the one hand having the chat window have the context of the current page I'm on seems like a good deal, in so far as there are strict privacy controls surrounding when I want the LLM turned on or off.

But I was left somewhat confused. When Im using ChatGPT or Claude, I can specify the model I want to use. In Dia, they won't even tell you what model is powering the experience under the hood. With anthropic products I can turn on chain of thought through simple menu toggles. In Dia? Nothing. What if I want to restrict exactly which tabs or elements of the browser the LLM has access to in any given moment? Eh, sorry. That's not really a thing. It's clear that Dia is leveraging AI. But in an overtly opaque way. I have no insight into what's happening. And no clear path to construct workflows that feel meaningful, or even industry standard compared to what else is being built in the market. And the cherry on top is that I have no idea what information browser company is collecting surrounding my personal browsing data.

Ultimately this is all forgivable. There still plenty of time to add in the bells and whistles one might expect. The next question would be how's the UI / UX compared to Arc? Well Dia is a... browser. Just a normal browser. It's got standard horizontal tabs. And candidly feels like what Chrome, Safari and everyone else is doing. All those fit and finish items Arc had didn't make it out of cold storage for this round.

A Mea Copa

I don't say all this to kick Dia while it's in the middle of its open beta. Betas are hard. I get it. I've been apart of many of them, and was actually working on a somewhat similar problem at the time when I downloaded the browser. But more than anything I couldn't help but think that the chat window they created for Dia could have been a chrome extension or a part of the core Arc experience out of the box as an additional feature (maybe paid even). And more than anything I'm sad to see the team abandon and move on from the absolute best browser I've ever used. Especially if it is to be replaced by an experience that feels like the browsers I've used since Windows Vista.

If Browser Company wants to be AI forward, hey I'm here for that. But the boundaries they were pushing on UI/UX up until this point really did change the way I interacted with the web, and I'm sad to to see the Arc put out to pasture.

What's Next

It's become a meme at this point, but Firefox and Firefox-based browsers could be on the cusp of having a major glow up. Firefox introduced vertical tabs not too long ago. Unfortunately turning the UI on takes digging through settings and menus, and there is no support for nested vertical tabs, which was Arc's secret sauce.

In addition, Zen Browser is being built out in the open as a FOSS browser powered by Firefox under the hood, and in many ways feels like the spiritual successor to Arc that I've been waiting for.

Like Dia, Zen browser is very early. But looks promising. Zen's team seems ultra committed to privacy, and also guess what? Firefox vertical tabs have a sweet little UI affordance for AI chat windows... as a feature. Not as an entirely new product.

Arc, you will be missed