Arc Browser : Thoughts after 60+ Days

Published: January 26, 2023Updated: November 1, 2024Clemente Gomez

Things I like about Arc Browser

  • No distractions: When the sidebar is hidden, there is nothing on the screen except the content. No address bar, no window bar, no status bar, no extension icons. NOTHING. I bounce back into Chrome for development and it's always jarring to see all the clutter on the screen. 🥲.
  • Command Palette: This reminds me a lot of the palette in Sublime Text. This makes getting around tabs and extensions and opening new pages FAST. Every app needs a command palette like this. It's the best productivity feature for me. wink Alfred wink
  • Spaces: You can separate your browsing into spaces so that you can separate tabs or bookmarks by category. For example, I have my work space separated from my personal space. This makes saving work-related bookmarks easier and having access to those pages quicker. Very reminiscent of the spaces feature in OSX.
  • Sidebar (tabs): The sidebar is great, it's the Arc developers' reimagining of tab management. Instead of having a ton of cramped tabs at the top of your screen, you have a much more elegant and familiar UI with just a scrollable list. It's actually so simple that I'm surprised that no one else has come up with this idea yet. Kudos to the designers on that one!! 🙌🏾
  • Split View: Just a cool feature to have especially since I'm using an ultra-wide monitor. The Split View Tab switcher could be a bit better though, it's kind of clunky.

Things I don't like

  • Bookmark Management:Though I do like the layout of the sidebar, I really dislike the way bookmarks are saved and displayed. For the uninitiated, your bookmarks just get saved as ever-persistent tabs and take up the sidebar once they start to stack up. I wish there was an option to hide this or even add looking at the list of the bookmarks from the command palette (a weird thing missing from that feature). Maybe display them how the last recent tabs show when the command palette is pulled up, after entering a keyboard. (If any developers read this, just like how Extensions come up).
  • Development:The dev tools seem more sluggish in Arc than in vanilla Chrome. Also, I run into a lot of cache issues when dev testing in Arc. This is no biggy though, Chrome works fine for this.
There are a bunch of other features in the browser like a notepad and a sketchpad. But I really find no value in those but thats just me. They don't get in the way, so I hope some folks out there are enjoying it. All in all, Arc is my new daily driver and goto browser when Im on my laptop. I've been using Arc for probably about 2-3 months now. Looking forward to the future development of the project!

Things I'd like to see added

  • Apple Pay support
  • Bookmark list in Command Palette
  • Mobile version (IOS)
  • Better bookmark management
  • Longer list on Command Palette
  • Private Tabs or/and Private Spaces (Would be nice to be able to just goto a space for Private browsing instead of a separate Arc window)

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