I’ve been using Arc for a few years now. However, the writing is on the wall:
So before I’m forced to take a leap, I’m trying to see what alternative browsers I might try.
The best thing about Arc, to me, is profile management. Sliding through different “spaces” with completely different logins and saved tabs is super intuitive and really helps me manage my multiple roles across different webapps.
Second-best is split tabs. I’d survive if I didn’t have this multiplexing ability anymore, but it sure is helpful for specific workflows.
Anyone else jumping ship yet? What’re you jumping to?
Not yet! I’ve invested a lot of time and thought fine-tuning my ARC profiles, spaces, folders, and pinned tabs to make it a place for focussed and intentional work. I don’t need any new features—just regular chromium updates and bug / security fixes.
I will give Zen browser a test-drive at some point, though.
Frankly, I am sticking with Arc till it’s receiving regular chromium updates to patch any security vulnerabilities, as there’s nothing like it. Zen Browser still has tons of bugs and the keyboard shortcut support is not that great.
Since I have started seeing compatibility issues with Arc – e.g. the Bitwarden extension’s keyboard shortcut stopped working for me completely – I have started to move back to Edge, which I have previously used on the Mac anyway. Also, I am somewhat tired of weekly Arc updates that bring only the new Chromium updates, requiring browser restarts.
With vertical tabs and tab groups, and multiple profiles and workspaces, the experience in Edge is pretty close to how I used Arc. I still use both in parallel but can give up on Arc any day as I have Edge configured the way I like.
Managing isolated cookie profiles is the real cornerstone of a web browser because it’s a feature that depend on the capabilities of the underlying browser engine but UI wise it touches things like open tabs, syncing and bookmark management.
Here’s my State of the Browsers report:
If you don’t need vertical tabs and advanced grouping, in my opinion Safari is pretty good managing different profiles, with the special touch that the Favorites bar will change depending on the profile using a special location in the common bookmarks tree which is shared across profiles and is synced via iCloud. The UI for selecting windows and profiles is totally absurd but coupled with some extension magic makes it very simple to create Profiles on demand.
The other Webkit browser, Orion, has super powerful nested vertical tabs and also has profiles but they do not share bookmarks at all and profiles other than the default one will not sync through iCloud. So if you create bookmarks in your non-default profiles you will not see them in other computers.
In Chromium based browsers having a different isolated profile and sharing tabs and bookmarks across devices requires a syncing email address which makes it less useful as usually one only has a work email address. Arc did manage to overcome this in a very cool way with a single email address for syncing and giving you the capability to associate the “Workspace” with the “Profile”. Also The Browser Company created the perfect Raycast extension for Arc.
Vivaldi is another uber-browser but as far as I know their Workspaces are just collections of tabs, they do not have isolated cookies. And the same happens with Edge – all Workspaces share the same cookies and bookmarks so they’re really only tab collections. Syncing workspaces in Edge works just fine, though, so you can use them to organize your tabs.
Firefox has this capability but it’s in the form of Firefox Containers and to be fair it can be confusing as hell (just try to undo selecting “Open this tab always in this container” by error), but at least only requires one single email address for syncing like Arc or Safari. Zen, basically being Firefox with a lot of custom plugins to make it look like Arc, will get there eventually and still has some minor edges but it’s good for day to day work. But it’s not yet as polished as Arc.
In the meantime, Ladybird is still cooking and it seems it will take some time to see the direction it takes in terms of profile management.
I’m really curious about this conversation. I’ve always used Safari but it has gotten very, very slow. Perhaps that’s because I have too many extensions? I dunno. I believe I recall David Sparks saying some years ago that Safari was leaner and more efficient than other browsers (especially Chrome, if I recall correctly). That said, I have Arc installed—but don’t use it—and it is quite snappy and responsive compared to Safari. Pages load much faster for me in Arc.
That said, I haven’t yet mustered the courage to pursue switching to something else and certainly one impediment is being able to use my Apple passwords with any other browser and doing so securely. It’s frustrating, though. Why can’t Apple make the unquestionably best browser to run on Apple’s operating system and running on Apple silica?
You can use the Chrome Extension for iCloud Passwords on almost any Chromium based browser. It’s done not by some random developer but by Apple itself and there is also another extension by Apple for Firefox.
You will also see a native macOS validation code popup in your computer the first time you try to use the extension, so I guess there is some E2E encryption going on between the iCloud Passwords and the extension.
The latest release from a couple of days ago makes managing Zen workspaces pretty much like Arc. A little bit too much because now when you click in the workspace name it will allow you to rename it and previously it displayed a dropdown menu of all the workspaces which was great.
+1 for sticking to Arc until it dies. For me it is practically feature complete. I love the spaces and vertical tabs = bookmarks. I also heavily use the Boosts to add micro improvents to often-visited websites.
By the time Arc bites the dust I hope something else presents itself as a 1:1 replacement.
It uses a similar paradigm as Arc, tabs are tasks, and I think it was launched before. It has vertical tabs with nesting, workspaces and a polished UI which I even prefer to Arc’s. You can isolate cookies across workspaces, and has an intriguing bookmarking capability based on tags, not folders of bookmarks.