Arc browser is shutting down on December 22, following a long spell of maintenance-only work as the company behind it moves forward with its successor, Dia. Earlier today, The Browser Company announced that the beloved web browser will ride into the sunset in two months, but will continue development of the Dia browser.
“That’s not an easy sentence to write. We spent years building Arc and celebrating each and every release along the way: we have so much pride and love for what we made alongside the Arc community,” says the company.
If you are currently using Arc, the company notes that all your saved content, including bookmarks, passwords, extensions, and history, will be seamlessly ported to the Dia browser. Moreover, all the tab groups, folders, and spaces that you have created in Arc can also be moved to Dia.
Art first started making waves all the way back in 2023, and its unique take on tab management won itself plenty of fans. Spaces, in particular, impressed us during the early days. “These are a bit like Safari’s tab groups, except done in a way more intuitive way. You can create spaces for work tabs, holiday planning tabs, etcetera, and keep them all separate. Instead of having to click between groups as in Safari, Arc just lets you swipe left or right. It’s beautifully intuitive,” said our deep dive.
The user-made boosts, clever AI-powered tricks, a built-in password manager, native live caption, and snappy performance made it a hot favorite among folks looking for a reliable Chrome alternative. Arc also came with uBlock Origin installed by default, and it also had session fingerprinting and some telemetry reports disabled out of the box.
Arc also had some nifty agentic features that were way ahead of the curve. The long-awaited mobile spin-off, Arc Search, was also a pretty remarkable piece of software. This is what I wrote when I first tried it back in 2024, and stuck with it for the years to come:
“With Arc Search, Browser Company apparently set out to create a no-frills browser that gets its core task done in as clean a fashion as possible. On that front, the team has delivered beyond expectations. But at the same time, this browser targets an audience that predominantly fires up the web browser on their phone to get quick answers from Google Search or visit a website of their choice. At this point, the fluidity of Arc Search truly shines, while its familiarity with the core iOS look is a bonus.”
Arc’s successor, Dia, is equally rewarding, and if you are tired of the same Chrome shenanigans or the laggardness of Safari, I highly recommend it. For now, rest in peace, dear Arc!