Trying out Arc

I got the beta invite for Arc and I think I’m going to kick the tires on it for a week as my main browser. So far, I’d say it has some really smart ideas and genuinely useful features, but I think some of its opinions on browsing workflows probably won’t stick with me long-term.

I like the way the address bar and pinned tabs work, Easels are genius, and Boosts have a ton of potential. That being said, so far I’m left just wishing Easels and Boosts were extensions I could add to Firefox.¹

It’ll be hard to peel me away from Firefox and the Multi-Account containers extension. Account containers and Firefox’s customizable UI have finally switched me off Chrome earlier this year, and I don’t see me switching back. Not to mention that using a browser that isn’t based on Chromium gives me warm fuzzies. On top of all that, there is no Windows version, so it seems really unlikely I’d change my browsing habits on macOS but not on Windows.

If you haven’t heard of Arc, these two videos from the A Better Computer channel on YouTube do a great job diving into it is and how it works:

Update (6 hours later)

Welp, I have already switched back. I made it through most of the day fine, but managing multiple windows while answering tickets this afternoon was a real pain in Arc. It really seems to excel at one screen or single window use, but having multiple windows and moving things beetween them is not great the way its currently implemented, IMO.

I suppose Boosts is kinda like Stylebot plus it adds the ability to inject custom Javascript. ↩︎