What is the Arc Browser? Arc is a new player in the browsing space, less than a year old, and now in a public (invite-only) beta. Despite its infancy, it could be positioned to knock Chrome out of its decade-long domination. After using it exclusively for the past month, I don’t see myself returning to Chrome.
Arc is built with an intentional eye on the user experience as something beyond functionality. It optimizes workflow beyond what you know all while paying special attention to the aesthetic of browsing.
Vertical Tabs and Auto Close
The vertical tabs took a minute to get used to, but eventually, it felt natural to have my hot buttons, pinned tabs, and temporary searches all accessible and organized. The way I use the internet is so flighty and temporal, it makes sense to have tabs close out automatically after a certain amount of time. How many times have you gone through your mobile browser tabs and found saved tabs from weeks ago? This feature to automatically close out temporary tabs is the logical next step for browsing. I also appreciate the emphasis on hiding the sidebar when you need to. This browser is built to be a tool to streamline and improve browsing. Arc is not afraid to become a background tool if it means a more enjoyable experience for the user.
Spaces
No more tabbing through multiple desktops of various abandoned browser windows with countless duplicate tabs. Spaces keep me organized. I use new spaces to correspond with new projects; easily closed out when they are over. Not to mention the added details of customized colors, names, and icons to make each Space feel like your own.
Hot Bar
I love a good keyboard shortcut. With Arc command + T I save time navigating. It brings up a search bar for my spaces, tabs, and beyond. I honestly don’t use Spotlight very often on my Mac (a similar hot bar feature) because it is limited in function. However, in Arc, almost anything can be searched for with command + T.
Return to Dashboards
Over the decades, dashboards have risen and fallen in popularity. The pro is the ease of access to all your data. The con is having all that data can be overwhelming. I think the first signal Dashboards were coming back was the rise in popularity of Notion and creating an aesthetic home page to navigate to your subpages. With the Arc easel feature, a new level of customized dashboard can be achieved.
Of course I found a way to relate this back to Taylor Swift… I used an Easel to plan out ideas for an outfit to wear to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour. While this might look like a collage or Pinterest board each of these images links back to their home site to add to a shopping cart. Kind of revolutionary for outfit planning, but the same concept applies to weather, sports, news, a playlist… you get the idea.
Not only can you have a static image that links back, but the image can be made “live” so it can sync the latest snapshot of the website. This is particularly useful to get the latest of any feed you are monitoring, i.e. create a custom dashboard.
Working in a Beta
It is hard to switch from a polished behemoth like chrome to something with bugs to work out. The Arc team launches weekly updates and is highly responsive to bug reports and suggestions. They want this browser to make life easier and have features that people want. It is truly a success story in terms of UI/UX.
I have five codes I can share here if you are interested in trying out the beta! I hope you enjoy Arc as much as I do.
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