Very interesting new browser

Apparently Arc is available for anyone now:

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I still think Orion is a more interesting ā€œnewā€ browser, especially because itā€™s webkit-based instead of chromium, but I have to admit the marketing behind Arc is second-to-none right now and thatā€™s probably why itā€™s generating all the hype. Arc does have some really cool features and the design is great though.

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Orion seems interesting: sb did a comparison on the power consumption.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/12cgydn/chrome_vs_arc_vs_safari_vs_orion_vs_firefox/

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1Password still doesnā€™t seem to work in it correctly for me and never has.
This makes it unusable, for me.

And because the UI is totally ā€œmac-assedā€. Still, Arc beats it in terms of feeling like a more finished, polished product, but I feel like the UI wastes too much space in the sidebar. If only Orion had proper tab folders instead of only nested tabsā€¦ (it seems to be planned).

The new 1Password extension should work in it, but I can confirm that the 1Password 7 ā€œclassicā€ extension does not. (And since I have no intention of moving away from 1P7 and its standalone vault, Iā€™m stuck working around that.)

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Iā€™ve been wishing and begging for Arc to have tree style/nested tabs, but so far to no avail. Unfortunately, in trying to use Arc, Iā€™ve quickly and repeatedly discovered that due to my browsing style (coming from a decade or more of Firefox + Tree Style Tabs extension), thatā€™s a showstopper for me. I get hopelessly lost in my pile of tabs in Arc. So, Iā€™ve settled on using Arc for casual or ā€œthrowawayā€ browsing and use Firefox for doing real long-term work.

Maybe if enough people point at Orionā€™s nested-tab implementation in Arc feature requests, theyā€™ll be swayed.

There are a couple of weird little things about Arc Iā€™m not crazy about, but so far the good outweighs the bad. Since I have the same problem as you (overwhelmed by tabs sometimes :slight_smile: ), can you share which Firefox extensions you find indispensable (other than Tree Style Tabs :smiley: )?

Yes, it is currently on their roadmap. There is not really any expectations on when this will be done, as the feedback forum is swamped with other bug reports and feature requests. Building a browser --even if you have the rendering engine-- is harder than it seems!

Edit: noticed that you were referring that you preferred nested tabs in Arc, not tab groups in Orion. Seems like Orion would serve you better.

In Firefox I think that Sideberry is more usable than other plugins. Sadly, I havenā€™t found a way to sync tab groups and panels across machines.

TST is actually the only tab-related extension I use. Thereā€™s probably more I could do to wrangle them a bit better, but for me itā€™s mainly about being able to structure my open tabs using that nested hierarchy. Eventually (and sometimes it takes far too long) I finish with the tabs and either close them out or archive the material elsewhere and then close them out. (And having them in trees makes it easy to close a bunch at once: just collapse the tree and close the parent tab!)

Iā€™m curious to hear what extensions others suggest, though.

Trying Arc again (previous attempt was last October).

Since the last time, I experimented a lot with tab groups, profiles and similar things with both Chrome and Edge. I liked Tab Groups in Edge better than Chrome, but reverted for reasons I donā€™t remember.

This time, after installing Arc and going through the setup screens, when I set up tab groups all of the web sites I use that have logins (most of them) opened up as already logged in. I havenā€™t had to log on to any site yet. Itā€™s like it imported cookies including the current state. Every time Chrome updates it seems Iā€™m forced to log in and do the whole 2FA rigamarole, so not having to do it was nice. Having become more familiar w/ profiles and tab groups the Arc way of doing things seemed less foreign. I do wish they had more choices for group icons, but not really a dealbreaker. Havenā€™t explored ā€˜little Arcā€™ very much yet but that seems interesting.

Little Arc is one of the main things I use Arc forā€”and the reason Iā€™ve set it as my default browser. Itā€™s a great quick and simple ā€œlanding spotā€ for any links that open from elsewhere (including unexpectedly) that makes it easy to either move it into something more persistent or dispense with it and return right to what I was looking at before.

yeah, I noticed that it uses Little Arc when opening links from emails - very handy for unsubscribing or quick confirmation things. I really like this feature!

Just made one change which makes more sense to me - dropped the use of ā€œSpacesā€ and just organized my most-used sites by category using Folders. Seems more intuitive.

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Just made one change which makes more sense to me - dropped the use of ā€œSpacesā€ and just organized my most-used sites by category using Folders

I have four spaces in Arc, three of which are tied to specific profiles. This makes it possible to, for example, be logged into different Google accounts in different spaces. I colour-coded the spaces so itā€™s visually obvious which one Iā€™m in.

I keep almost all of my bookmarks in Anybox, making switching browsers easy. I use Arcā€™s Pin Tab feature (āŒ˜D) for things Iā€™m actively working on (e.g. a Google Doc) that I want to be able to jump to quickly and donā€™t want to be cleared automatically.

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The main problem I have with pinned tabs is that theyā€™re essentially stuck on whatever page you pinned them with. Meaning, if you browse to another page on that pinned tab, it will reset back to the original page if you ever quit Arc and then reopen it. Pinned tabs also donā€™t preserve the tabā€™s browsing history, so you canā€™t hit the back button on any of them once youā€™ve pinned it and then ended the browsing session. Thatā€™s fine for something like a specific Google Doc, but less ideal for a ā€œsaving my placeā€ sort of use.

When clicking on a link in a pinned tab, the link will open in a regular tab if you hold down the āŒ˜ key. Sometimes I also temporarily unpin a tab (using āŒ˜D) and repin it when Iā€™ve arrived at a location that I want to pin.

Thereā€™s also right click > Pinned URL > Replace pinned URL with current. I use that for documentation Iā€™m working through. Admittedly itā€™s clunky, though. Iā€™d like to see the option to set pinned tabs to live update (sort of like the UI for websites in easels with the pause button.)

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I actually prefer the static current implementation for my workflow. To each their own I guess. They could add it as a preference setting perhaps.

They do have those and I use them frequently. Are we not talking about the same thing? I am referring to the pinned folders as I can create subfolders, etc.