Just switched to arc on windows. It’s really buggy but I wanted to still give it a chance because it feels really nice when it does what it should. I hoped it will get better over time. Still hope so but I don’t believe anymore…
The plan this time is to build not just a different interface for a browser, but a different kind of browser entirely — one that is much more proactive, more powerful, more AI-centric, more in line with that original vision.
Who could have thought? These goons are so predictable…
AI is the magic word, if you need loads of VC money.
the arc of browser is long, and bends towards techbro nonsense
Made for and by people with ADHD
Another Chrome-based browser of shit.
I want the premium vertical UI and ease of switching spaces in Arc but without the AI slop and venture-backed rhetoric about reinventing the browser.
The browser is fine. We need more companies that can fork the good parts of successful browser engines and remove the tracking and AI hype bloat. Those companies won’t make VC-level money but they could make decent year-over-year profit with a strong community following.
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Why would anyone use a browser that requires you to login, especially after that: https://kibty.town/blog/arc/
i tried it with bogus accounts just to see what all the hype was, and yea… it’s just bloatware pretending to be something “new” and “innovative” just to get suckers to sign up with their actual info
I really like the vertical tabs, the split profiles, the quick notes and the mini windows for links from other applications. If there is a prior product with all these features I’d love to try it. Please send a link.
All of those are problems which extensions already mostly solve. Firefox has tree style tabs, sideberry and tabstash. You can hide the horizontal tab bar with css. You can create multiple profiles in Firefox, and you can open separate isolated windows for each. Notes depend on your chosen software, but simple browser-only extensions exist. I don’t care about mini windows; that is a non-issue already solved with tab mgmt keyboard shortcuts.
What I’m reading here is that it is new for a browser to offer all those features. You’d need to do a bunch of customisation to reach a similar result otherwise. It’s fine that people don’t care about it, but that doesn’t make it less new.
Firefox has all those things already (albeit vertical tabs are experimental still). Just without the AI marketing and the built-in identity theft.
how cheaply our data is bought…
If you want an experience similar to Arc without the AI nonsense, there is Zen Browser, a Firefox fork with vertical tabs, profiles and side panel.
Honestly, it sounds like Arc doesn’t add much beyond firefox + an extension that utilizes the built-in sidebar. I signed up for the beta then never got round to testing it. After reading about its amateur security flaws I was glad for my laziness.
I’ve been switching between sideberry, tab stash, tab session manager, and tree style tabs for years. All of them feel like they fulfill most of what was described in this article, except you get container tabs, which are superior to workspaces.
My main complaints with Firefox are Mozilla corp, and profile/config management. I’m not dumb enough to think switching to “the browser company” corp will solve the first problem, and it doesn’t sound like Arc is anywhere near solving the second.
Have been using it on the side for a couple of weeks now and it’s pretty nice. Hope they don’t fuck it up, I could see myself using it as my main browser in the future.
ITT: arc shills
Is there even one positive comment here?
Yeah that is absurd. I’ve found exactly one comment that is at least not negative.
I stay away from proprietary stuff when there are great open source alternatives out there. A proprietary system will always be more driven by those funding it, than the needs of the user and nearly always turn users into products, selling their information.
I’ve been using Firefox variants for a while. I use LibreWolf on desktop and Mull on mobile and a self hosted sync server so it works seamlessly. But there are others, or just use Firefox and disable or block telemetry. There are a few sites here and there that I don’t have the choice not to use and don’t like the privacy features or don’t render properly, so I keep Chrome around for emergencies. But that’s rare, mostly government sites.
The plan this time is to build not just a different interface for a browser, but a different kind of browser entirely — one that is much more proactive, more powerful, more AI-centric, more in line with that original vision.
lol
yeah I saw ai centric and stopped reading
I still cannot get over the fact that a browser requires an account to use.
I’m trying to figure out what that means. Like if I were to imagine a wishlist of things AI might do in a browser:
- generate user-scripts to modify styling and perhaps even layouts through natural language.
- Use AI to automatically detect and remove advertisements, nsfw, etc. as desired
- identify spoofed websites and prevent them from opening
- search through browser history by natural language so that you’ll always be able to find that one page where you read that thing
- scan through a massive website (Wikipedia, corporate confluence or sharepoint) to find pages relevant to a natural language search
- identify fake content (lies, veiled advertisements, seo spam, satire)
Okay that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Those would in theory be nice features to have, although I’d be worried about the ability to reliable deliver.
I also think all of that could be offered as a plugin for a regular browser. So I’m at a loss as to what would make the whole browser AI-centric.
Also I’m only reading the quote here, but I’d they are referring to the original vision of the web, it has nothing to do with any of this shit. But if that’s not the original vision being referred to then never mind.
You’ll just get a shitty hallucinating search engine assistant and you’ll be happy about it!
I’ve already got that without a new browser. I’m good, thanks.
one thing i know it does from GitHub issues is it changes the names of files you download to make them “clearer”, which breaks some tools for flashing firmware and lead to a spike of reports.
I’ve been using the Zen fork of Firefox and have been enjoying it greatly. It’s still pretty early, and a lot of the Firefox issues are still there, but regardless it’s felt better than any other browser I’ve used lately.
And since it’s Firefox, it’s unaffected by he Mv3 bullshit
Just switched to it and really liking it so far. But it’s missing folders for now… But they say they will push them the day Mozilla releases them to stable Firefox. I hope this project survives!
Yeah Zen is really nice, was going to try Arc one time but was immediately turned off by the account requirement.
This looks great, how have I not heard of that?
Can you install Firefox addons? How is keyboard navigation?
It can install addons like any other FF fork, and there’s an entire settings tab with a long list of keybinds.
Nice, that’s great to hear! I’ll give it a try
I hope you like it! Zen with AVX2 finally ended my years of browser hopping.
I’m not sure I’ll stick to it yet, since I really heavily on vim bindings through Tridactyl, and I got a feeling they won’t play nice (yet?). Zen is also not packaged on nix yet, so configuring it declaratively is going to be a pain
But I like what I see, so I’ll give it a shot! If it’s not for me, I can still recommend it to others, some of my friends are newly moving to Linux and I’ll take that chance to get them to ditch Opera, this might replicate some of the features quite nicely. Cheers!
What is the appeal of Arc? I’ve just seen it like opera gx but for normal people.
If you want that style of UI use Zen browser, it’s based on Firefox and doesn’t require an account to use it.
Arc is just another crappy browser based on Chrome. The account requirement was and is a huge red flag.
Already switched to Zen. It’s great! Much better community, less buggy, and the dev actually knows what they’re doing. Split tabs still need improvement tho.
Hopefully Servo gets a good UI soon.
