If you're anything like most people, you probably spend a lot of time on your browser. Chrome being the most popular. But have you noticed that it hasn't changed much in over a decade? Unlike most other tech products with massive upgrades recently, especially with the ubiquitous AI, most browsers are... just there. Functional, yes, yet hardly on a personal level. Until Arc came along, but now it's being taken away from us.
Okay, not taken away from us. The Browser Company, the company behind the Arc browser, is no longer going to maintain it. They are instead pivoting to a new browser, Dia, that's going to be "your" browser, with AI. But before Dia, let's talk about Arc.
I had heard of Arc a long time ago when Marques Brownlee and his team talked about it on the Waveform Podcast. They weren't yet into it then. I gave it a try, but it just seemed like a whole new thing to learn and even begin to migrate to. Although migration [from Chrome or other popular browsers] is very easy and smooth, it doesn't take Hive Keychain and my setup along. That is, I had to set up my Hive account and some others all over again.
When the news about Arc and Dia broke, of course, Marques and his team talked about it. Extensively this time, and they even had the CEO on the show. After dismissing Arc months ago, I became convinced to check it out again... and I really liked it. So here's a bit about my experience. I'll come back to Dia in a minute.
I like novelties. Arc is different... it's novel, and I think it's for similar reasons that it's been able to amass quite the community of loyal users. I'd like to think that they aren't the only ones doing something new and fresh, though, and so that regular community live session they did for weeks did something in their favor.
As you can see from my screen, the tabs are on the left. It's usually at the top for most browsers, but what's more about it is how you can organize your tabs better. And you can toggle it off if you want a full-screen view.
I particularly like this one because it not only makes more use of horizontal spaces and frees some on the vertical, but there's also a tidy feature that automatically puts my tabs into categories.
I could already have multiple Chrome windows and spread them across my screen, but it's a little different on Arc. I don't have to have another window. Just split within Arc. Now this is cool. It's way quicker to do, and I can even choose between horizontal and vertical splits -- which is very handy, as I don't have to resize many windows.
Another thing I appreciate is how the search box pops up in the center when I need to use it. That, among other things, makes Arc refreshing to use. There are probably a lot more features I don't know about, though. I haven't tried them all yet, but I already like it anyway. Maybe I'll talk more about it in the future. It's time for Dia now.
It does seem weird to jump right on a new browser, especially when you consider the new features coming to Dia are mostly AI-centric. Why not just do all of the new stuff on Arc? Well, as Josh Miller (the CEO) explained, they "really tried." Apparently, with what they're bringing, they just had to pivot.
Not only is AI able to think for us these days, it's also able to do. Dia is supposedly a browser that would really understand you and be able to do things for you.
I'm not sure how best to explain this without a demo -- although I'll link that right up - but think about making orders without doing it yourself. Taking context from how you do things, the tabs you have open, it's supposed to do as you do. It's really interesting, if you think about it.
There's already a lot to learn moving to Arc. Adding a ton of features (that Dia is going to have instead) is probably going to make it overwhelming for people. So it really does make sense to make a new browser instead. This isn't happening without some reactions from users, however, as they won't maintain it any further. People have come to love Arc.
If you want to hear the conversation between Josh and Marques on the Waveform Podcast, check it here. I already set it to start right at that section. It's a bit from the entire conversation, though, slotted in this episode. The full conversation should be released in a couple of hours today, Monday. I'll update this post when it's released.
Images in this post were either taken myself or are screenshots