Arc is a browser
Way back in 2019 a new company appeared called The Browser Company. They set out with a mission to reinvigorate the browser and although I love loving things and am guilty of being easily convinced I tinkered with their first release in 2022 but ultimately moved on.
… but then 2023 and the “Chat GPT/ Ai/ Horny Bing thing happened and reminded us that the last place software makers are able to innovate free from gate keepers is the desktop and the web.
After all that time and work I think I’m picking up Arc as it starts to really come into its own. A powerful tool that has loads of really neat features that make using a computer every day a lot more fun and feel very productive. I was inspired to pick it up by an interview with the Founder and CEO Josh Miller this week on The Vergecast. It was full of big ideas and has me excited about desktop software for the first time in ages.
From a short time playing with it here are the things I think are great;
The getting started section when you open the browser is really helpful and got me started quickly.
There is so little chrome on display that it’s startling. This might make it a power user application which is harder for some folks to start to use but I love the simplicity and tend not to underestimate users and their ability to find features.
Case in point, I found instructions for password exporting from Safari, probably my biggest barrier to moving browsers, and they were inside the app!
The different scenes are handy. I have one for work and a personal one.
It’s very customisiable letting you choose things like the notes app you use as well as usual stuff like search engine and hotkeys
There are SO MANY HOTKEYS!! 🤩 my favourite is the CMD + Shift + C which copies the URL for you.
Links opening in new tabs open in a box overlaid over the previous one so if it’s something like a calendar link you can act upon it and then close it, never having to worry about yet another tab.
Little Arc is a quick browser window you can pop to check quick things. I’m not sure how useful it actually is but I like it.
You can also open pages side by side in a kind of Split View. Very handy.
Did I mention the sheer number of hotkeys?
I’m a fan of competition and I’m excited to see these sorts of innovations from the likes of The Browser Company and hope that smaller players like them and Mozilla can survive. We need the future of technology and the tools we use every day to be built by the many, not the few.
If only I could run it on Linux … and I could get a good Arm based Linux laptop …