Pros

• Easier to use profiles and switch between a work and personal account.
• Full paging sites does not necessarily mean you have to full page the window. You can hide the left sidebar so all you see is the web page. It makes progressive web apps and websites all look like native applications for your desktop.
• Newer app means that The Browser Company is more likely to implement your features and changes that are requested on their subreddit or discord server.
• New look to the browser experience means that your web browsing experience can be more aesthetically pleasing.
• More keyboard shortcuts means you can do a lot more browsing with your keyboard than you can on the other browsers.
• Spaces organize your tabs/windows better than different accounts on other browsers. You can access different spaces from the same browser window or 2 different browser windows. You can turn spaces into “Folders” which are a group of tags or keep them as separate “Spaces” which can have separate pinned tabs and unpinned tabs.
• When using Arc for development, it makes the development tools (Chrome Inspector, screenshot tool, network tool, and others easy to find. They are in the top right corner of your browser window and have all of the same functionality as Chrome since Arc is built with Chromium.
• When you are logging into a website with social media or iCloud any pop up windows open on top of your browsing window. Meaning you don’t have to open a new tab and close that new tab just to sign into websites.

Cons

• Because it uses Chromium, it can eat RAM which means cause your computer to overheat and lag.
• Bookmarks are not available. You can Pin tabs to keep them across sessions and they act as bookmarks but bookmarks themselves are unavailable. Pinned tabs are available when you access from your iPhone though. So they act very similarly to bookmarks you interact with.
• Only available on iPhone and MacOS currently. No mentions of it coming to iPad anytime in the near future. Windows is coming December 2023 or Q1 2024. Haven’t heard anything about Android, Linux, or Android Tablet support.
• You can’t have separate windows with different tabs in each. Each window has the same tabs with the same areas and everything so if you want to play a youtube video on one monitor (if you have more than one) and then browse on a second monitor, you have to use a different browser.
• No account to sign into to sync bookmarks, extension, or any other data to a new device if you get a new device while using this browser. You would have to set it up from scratch.
• It is a very different look and takes some time to get used to. Most may not be able to adapt.
• When you are developing, the tabs that are localhost:8000 or something similar have horrible black and yellow dashed lines around them that clash with almost any design you may have with your space. I understand why it is like this (so you can easily tell which tabs are your development tabs) and luckily they only show when those tabs are active but they hurt my eyes (no 20/20 vision here) and just look so bad.

Our Review

I am obsessed with Arc. I recently got a MacBook Pro M3 and it runs super well on the device. Hasn’t chewed through RAM at all and its development features have blown me away. It did take some time getting used to. When I first opened it we thought it was too different and only used it for 5 minutes and went back to Safari but after coming back to it and giving it a full day, I just became obsessed.

As a developer the development tools being at easy reach are super nice. I don’t have to remember to press CMD + SHIFT + I to access the Chrome inspector tool. I can just click on the console icon in the top right to open the console. You can pin access to extensions on these development tabs as well. It is super useful.

I just want to browse the web more with Arc because of how unique it is and how fast it is. It feels like a whole new experience on the websites I already use and am used to. Also, I can full screen more websites to make them feel like applications. Just look at the example below of ZeldaDungeon.net a Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Interactive Map:

Compared to how the browser usually looks (below) you can see I can hide the borders around the website as well as the sidebar. This works on all websites when you hide the sidebar with CMD + S. It is annoying how you have to press CMD + S twice to actually hide the sidebar and on the ZeldaDungeon site I had issues unhiding the sidebar. I guess it was thinking CMD + S was for something on the website instead of the browser so until I exited Full Screen in Arc I was not able to show the sidebar again. Though you can easily get around this by moving your mouse up to the menu bar and pressing View then Show Sidebar and that shows it.

You can also see in the bottom left corner that you can minimize picture-in-picture youtube videos. I was listening to a podcast while writing this and you can see I have it minimized right above where I can switch my spaces. This is a feature I’ve never seen before in other browsers but I have come to appreciate.

Also, the tabs can be renamed. The “Modify Widgets” Todoist tab you can see in the sidebar above App Seeker is not the name of that tab. Todoist has its own naming scheme for their support ticket tags (yes it is one) and I have renamed it so I know what it is for.

Pinned tabs are the ones above that barely visible white line under the Arc – App Seeker tab. Pinned tabs work like bookmarks and I am able to quickly pull them up on my iPhone. Once I receive a copy of Arc to test for Windows (if my Windows PC cooperates, it is slowly dying) I will update this review with how Arc is different there and if you can pull up tabs there.

For now, on Mac, it works BEAUTIFULLY. It is VERY different from other browsers though and takes some adjustment but the features it has are super nice. For example, you can split tabs in Arc. Which means show 2 tabs on one screen. The only other browser I’ve seen that is able to do this is Edge. With Edge you can only split them vertically and you cannot hide the sidebar (as far as what I remember – I’ll have to test next time I boot up my Windows PC) so you have 3 tabs vertically which takes up a lot of screen real estate.

As you can see, Arc can split tabs vertically and horizontally plus being able to hide the sidebar is AMAZING. The best part is, you can see it reopened both tabs as 2 new tabs so if I want to close that pair of tabs, I’m not closing the original singular websites I had there. I can also add up to 4 tabs and you can see what that looks like below. I am going to show you both horizontal and vertical view of having 4 tabs open on my 16″ MacBook Pro.

I’ve never known ANY browser to do that. Now, when you drag to add additional tabs, you can see in the sidebar that those tabs are only added once that I added. So this means I need to drag them out of the shared space before closing that group if I want to keep any of the tabs. You can give those 4 tabs a different name and a special icon to differentiate them from your other tabs. Every time I find new things out (yes I am finding this out about the tabs while writing this review) I am blown away. I find it so amazing what can be done with a browser and wonder why it hasn’t been done yet.

Moving onto Spaces, away from tabs. Spaces are groups of tabs. You can see in the screenshots I am in my “💙 Personal” Space and I also have a “💼 Work” space at the bottom. I have separate tabs in each space. This is, by far, one of my favorite features of Arc. I love being able to keep my work tabs separate from my personal tabs. I also love not having to have 2 browser windows open just to achieve that or even 2 separate browsers. As a developer, I get all of the features of Chrome + the additional with Arc (which I discussed above) and I can keep all of those development tabs separate from my personal tabs so I don’t have to worry about closing them out.