What is Arc?

in my time with Arc over the past few months (or would i say a year), i got hands-on experience to gauge if this newcomer really does outshine established options like chrome, edge and firefox or if its glossy promises ring hollow. join me as I break down my key takeaways across factors like speed, performance, site compatibility, and distinguishing features.

will the arc browser change the way for how i browse? or will it leave me longing to return to my usual browser of choice? read on for the full light and dark of Arc straight from my monitor.

So Arc came in as a fresh breath of air i thought that they are the next thing after slice bread, but eventually it turned out to be true, they are the next thing after sliced bread. The onboardin◊g experience was nothing short of thrilling, they had a very good onboarding experience, and the UI was very intuitive, it was easy to navigate and understand. they mastered the art of physocology and knowing what the user wants, and they gave it to us physocologically (pun intended).

when the cracks started showing

arc’s initial magic began to wear off after a while. the whole “lightweight” thing felt like a joke when my laptop fan started sounding like a jet engine just because i had three tabs open. i checked activity monitor, and yep – arc was eating up over 12 GB of memory (of course with swapped) for no reason. cpu spikes were constant, and my M1 macbook pro (which usually handles everything like a champ) was struggling.

then the bugs started piling up. split-view tabs? they’d randomly resize themselves. pinned sites? they’d unpin out of nowhere. the “boosts” feature (which lets you tweak websites with custom css/js) would sometimes break entire pages until i restarted the browser.

the locked-in problem

one of the biggest frustrations? you can’t export your data. like, at all. every other browser lets you take your bookmarks, history, and settings with you if you decide to switch. not arc. you’re locked in. all your spaces, tabs, and preferences are stuck there unless you manually copy-paste everything (which, let’s be real, nobody has time for). it’s like they designed it to make leaving as painful as possible.

the good stuff (because there was some)

don’t get me wrong – arc had some killer features. the spaces feature? chef’s kiss. being able to separate work, personal, and random browsing into different spaces was a game-changer. it felt like having multiple desktops but for your browser. and clearing cache for a specific website? genius. no more nuking your entire browsing history just because one site was acting up.

the onboarding experience was also top-tier. it felt like they actually understood what users wanted. the UI was clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. they nailed the psychological aspect of design – making you feel like you were using something futuristic and polished.

goodbye to the cult of potential

there’s something uniquely painful about abandoning software that once felt revolutionary. arc’s spaces and fresh design perspective genuinely changed how i browsed… when it worked. but between the resource hogging, and the VC-driven pivot, it became clear: arc was built to last maybe but i’ve noticed VC funded products don’t usually end well.

so here we are. another “visionary” app that mistook traded stability for hype, and collapsed under its own ambition. maybe their AI browser will be different. but for now? i’m back to edge. yes EDGE broswer.

— written on a M1 macbook pro that’s finally quiet again.