Agreed. It's mainlined a lot of plugins that I used to use in Chrome and default keyboard shortcuts that I would have chosen myself. Window management, spaces, and automated tab lifecycles are by far the most valuable features I use.
Have they added proper bookmarks yet? That was a deal breaker when I used it last. You could pin/favorite tabs and such, but I could never find a way to store the bookmarks that are not regularly used, but I may need to bring up from time to time. I assume this is just a philosophical disagreement between myself and the Arc devs about how one should use a web browser
But where do those folders appear? Are they still visible in the sidebar? Because the whole purpose of saving those bookmarks, to me, is to remove visual clutter while still having them available when needed.
If I wanted to keep using Arc but found this feature critical, I would make a Space with a single pinned folder that I put all the bookmarks under. Not super ergonomic, but just suggesting an idea to a fellow user.
Yeah, that's the option I was recommended when I was trying to use Arc. But to me that kinda feels like getting an Android phone and putting a launcher and skin on it to look like iOS. If I'm gonna switch, I want to switch because it works for me, not because I can coax it into behaving close enough to the way I want, you know? Especially for as radical change as Arc is proposing. So I just decided it wasn't for me, even if I like a lot of their other ideas.
In my main space there's an "Imported Bookmarks" folder in the side bar. Yes it takes up 1 "tab space" but it's there, and doesn't really bother me. If you change spaces it's not there, so you can have "bookmarks" for each space, which is unique and beneficial if you use spaces for specific things.
That said, I primarily use Safari still, until other browsers adopt the SMS autofill of two factor codes it's going to be tough to leave Safari for personal use. Professional use I generally use chrome, as it's tied to our work google account.
So the feature you want is to hide bookmarks, because you can just put as many as you want under one folder. The bookmarks exist and you're making it sound like they dont.
I'm not making it sound like they don't, the bookmarks feature as it exists in every other major browser, doesn't exist in Arc, as this thread has affirmed for me. That's fine, if that's how they want their browser to work, but it makes it incompatible with how I use a browser, which is why I was asking if that had changed or not.
This was also the only reason that made be almost to bail until someone on reddit mentioned they are using raindrop.io extension as a bookmark manager that is cross platform. I pinned raindrop.io so that i can easily access it with a button and search in similar way as in firefox.
Otherwise without it Arc experience is bad:
1. importing ~5k of bookmarks (yes I use bookmarks as some link I might potentially find useful 1 year later and just tagging them like: "ml, model, ai stable, diffusion" so I can easily search for it even few years later) take very very long time
2. they all endup in folder as tabs and such big amount of bookmarks keeps left bar very slow
3. arc seem not to import tags from firefox
4. there is no bookmark manager were you can easily search by title, keywords, tags or sort by date
Dammit, I thought this was about Arc language (the language/platform that HN uses, http://arclanguage.org/). Guess I'm stuck with using Anarki still.
More on topic, seems it's still a waitlist? I go to their page and see "Join Waitlist" and "Coming in Winter 2023", so maybe page hasn't been properly updated yet?
A browser that requires an account to use? No thanks.
The "why do i need an account" popup doesn't properly explain it to me either, syncing should be optional - let me use, or at least try, it without an account first.
Why? Of course so they can have their "registered users" count as high as possible to get another round of VC funding, so that they can drag this thing all the way to the IPO and get a nice and fat exit :)
I don't think I want to have anything to do with this company. Super cringe.
I get the impression that Arc will be a form over function product reflecting someone's understanding of good design and insisting on it. Not that I'd use a closed source browser anyway.
They're definitely very ... spirited. The browser is good, though, and I know some people who say it's their favorite. It's got some neat power features, and I'm happy to see innovation in the browser space. Their spaces feature is very slick and the main thing I miss when using Orion. I wish them success.
Cringe is an understatement… I would love to see a company that simply stated the point was to make money.
Finance companies feel no shame at this, why are tech companies so cringe with the mission and vision stuff?
It got baked into the silicon valley culture for some reason. When the rebellious innovators à la Wozniak and the Berkeley folks merged with trillions of VC spewing finance bros, a weird amalgam was created where while everything is in reality about money, it needs to be sugar coated with drivel about wanting to change the world and solve world hunger via the application of middle out compression algorithms
This is the 12th link from this domain over last 10 months and it finally got enough attention to reach the main page with over 150 comments. About 7 months ago browser page had nothing but a field for an email address to put you on waiting list.
Off topic, but clicking that link and seeing the "X" logo is really jarring to me. I heard it happened, but actually clicking a link in the wild and seeing that big dumb as-is Special Alphabets 4 "X" as a "logo" still shocked me.
Their website still doesn't tell me anything useful enough about the browser to let me know if it's something that would interest me. It's all just marketing-speak.
Agreed. I don't use a Mac anymore, but I've been hearing about this browser and how excellent it is, but their website does such an awful job of conveying anything that I'm surprised anyone ever started using it. Actually, to give them some credit, they seem to have redone the site somewhat, and it now actually has screenshots. Last time I visited it barely had a description of the product, so I guess they're headed in the right direction.
The Youtuber MKBHD has a podcast[0] where they have mentioned that many in their office has switched over to it. I'm not sure I quite understand their enthusiasm for it, but I don't think they're paid shills.
the venn diagram of people who say Arc is good, and people who say NordVPN is good, is a circle.
maybe not everybody who says arc is good is being paid to say that. but they are all people who accept money to say things like "arc is good". MKBHD included.
Can't watch video right now, but the blog isn't helpful. I just want to know about the browser, not all the navel-gazing around the browser. But, since another commenter mentioned you need an account to use the browser at all, it doesn't matter anyway.
This has been my primary issue with Arc. I can't tell what it is and the copy on the website reads like it comes from the world's most pretentious designer. I feel like any tech blogger covering this can't be taken seriously when they say "I just decided to give Arc a try because of how it looks" when there were 0 pictures on the website and the intro heading was literally "Arc is a browser". Okay Arc.
What's the point with a bunch of information when you can just download it and try for yourself? If you're at the car dealership, don't you want to take a car for a test ride first, before getting into more details?
Because you want to know what it is like before installing it? From what I gather so far this is not an executable I trust and feel comfortable running on my personal computer.
Back in the day, it would take ages to download and install software, and it could mess up your system. If now was then, I'd see your point.
But if you don't trust a software, then you should never install it, and you should never ask for reinsurance from the software makers. If their goal is to compromise personal computers, then they will also lie in any information they put out.
It's like being at a car dealer that you think is a criminal, and asking him to double-pinky swear that the car you're looking at wasn't stolen.
Everything about this browser reminds me of Apple's product pages. All marketing speak, vague, empty promises, and loads of hype everywhere for things I'm doing already on what I have right now.
It worked for Apple so I can't blame them for trying, but it makes the entire thing feel so empty.
It looks like someone mashed the basic features Microsoft built into Edge into a a frame around Webkit with one or two cool features.
I don't want to go all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 but Microsoft Edge seems to be doing most of the features this browser seems to have and more, and it's from a software company I expect to still exist in five years.
I feel like a lot of these features would bode well on the operating system level, rather than the browser level. If I’m someone who uses the same device for both work and personal use, I’m going to want more changes than just which bookmarks I use or which sites are logged in. That’s why both Windows & Macs have their Focus modes, or, for even more advanced use, different Users altogether, to separate all of my programs (or “apps”) depending on what I’m doing.
Changing the color of my browser isn’t really something I find worthwhile. Nor is moving the URL bar to the left; my monitor is more wide than tall, so it’s easier on my eyes and for moving my mouse to just look up as opposed to the left for navigation.
Competing against Chrome is interesting, although it’s still powered by Chromium, so nothing changes there. They are still at the mercy of features Google decides are worth pursuing, rather than W3C.
it isn't mentioned anywhere but it's chromium based — which is of course is practical, but I wonder how dependent on Google that makes them and other browsers using it
Not particularly. Almost every browser out there other than Firefox and Safari are using Chromium, Including Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi, so there's a large enough base that a fork could conceivably be created and maintained if needed.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but why is this practical? It’s a Mac app, WebKit already ships with the OS and can be easily used with WKWebView. Bundling Chrome is a much bigger app size and much more complicated build setup than importing a class that ships with Cocoa.
Practical because they're also working on adding Windows support. Although it sounds like they're writing everything in SwiftUI and trying to port most of the Swift code to run on Windows? So not necessarily the most practical approach there either.
> Arc is built from the ground up to be private and secure. We don’t know what sites you visit or what you search for.
Immediately following this is a form for me to enter my email address so I can receive a download link. Sorry Arc, that’s not a trade I’m willing to make.
I think they show different buttons depending on your platform. If you visit from a mobile browser, it shows a "Get download link" button which asks for your email.
They presumably do this so that people can download it later from desktop using the emailed link. It's easy to mistake it as an attempt to harvest email IDs. The website could definitely use some text which indicates that it's Mac only at the moment.
Yeah their messaging is a bit strange. Perhaps someone with more info on Arc can clarify, but their landing page makes a strong point about them being privacy-conscious, and their summary of their own terms of service is "TLDR: we won't spy on you", but at the same time you must log in to use the browser. What is their monetization strategy? If something is VC-backed and free, it's hard to believe that they aren't ad supported in some way, which almost always relies on some amount of tracking.
I think this is the Ouroboros of curiosity - discovery, investigation, disappointment, amnesia. If it doesn't catch, we don't really remember it. This seems very human.
I'm like that with a couple of hole-in-the-wall restaurants in the area that people hype, but aren't actually good. I forget their names and visit every few years.
> A browser, un no circumstances, should be log-in walled.
Why? Not that Arc does this, but in today's modern world, we're two device creatures; a smartphone and a laptop. How do you connect the two if not with some sort of login?
There's value on the wrapper around the rendering engine. Presumably you don't use the raw engine, and use many of the UX features provided by your chosen wrapper (of which there are many). Things like tabs and extensions, hell even having history,
settings, cookies, and a back button are UX niceties a raw engine doesn't necessarily provide. So the wrapper is important; making a better wrapper is thus a worthwhile endeavor. Extensions only go so far, and if ManifestV3 ever lands, and stops ad-blocking extensions from functioning, it's easy to see a hypothetical consumer-focused browser that restored that functionality, or had it natively would easily be worth millions.
The only question is if they can actually make money, and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that. Opera, the browser company had revenue of around $380 million last quarter, but if you don't use their browser, which is also "just" a chrome wrapper, you'd never know it.
To put it another way, Linux distros; Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc, are all "just" wrappers around the Linux Kernel. Yet "I made a Linux Kernel wrapper" is worth at least a billion, in the case of Red Hat. If you never come near that distro, you might not even see a reason for its value, but you can't argue with their sales numbers.
> it's easy to see a hypothetical consumer-focused browser that restored that functionality, or had it natively would easily be worth millions
And where would those millions come from? Make the browser paid? It could work if it's really that good, and it'd likely be targeted at Apple users who won't mind paying. Seems risky though, eventually if you're too popular, Google will just copy some superficial stuff you're doing and people will forget about you.
> and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that
That's an interesting question! Paying for things is the obvious answer, but us users have been trained to feel entitled to not paying for other people's hard work. So the most interesting one in the space of "how to get people to pay for a web browser" is Replay.io, which is "just" a firefox re-skin (it's infinitely more than that) selling to a niche audience that is known for being cheap. So rather than sell to them directly, sell to their employers (it's a business tool) and get into the enterprise space, which is its own can of worms. It's a ridiculously powerful tool, if only their target market could manage to hold it correctly.
The context of the statement was different, and you took it to a whole different level. A browser wrapper is a wrapper by any other name. Linux is different.
Personally, I consider this switch to Chromium solidified Chrome and derivatives dominance - with Presto-based Opera there was always a choice. It's also a shame they didn't released the code of this engine.
Why do people care so much about the rendering engine? They are also basically the same for most websites people actually care about, the important part is the UI.
That being said I’d strongly prefer the native WebKit be used since it wouldn’t make the thing 300mb.
I understand this reaction, but you're missing the point. It's precisely that the rendering engine is not what drives value; it's what you build on top of that sediment layer.
Lots of things are built on FOSS components. How many appliances are built on nix-with-an-app? Are they just wrappers? What about Linux distros themselves, or all nix flavors and distros?
The value, in this case, is in the UI. The engine is a commodity.
The value isn't in the browser engine, it's in the implementation and the user experience.
I don't love Arc -- I bounced off it pretty fast -- but it's not insane to think that a VC would see the reuse of the most common browser engine as a good thing, as it means less work on the part of the developers and more of a focus on what sets the browser apart.
It's disappointing that there's no Linux version. It's a little silly for them to build on top of a multi-platform browser and then eliminate support for 2 major platforms. I had been looking forward to trying this.
They haven't "eliminated" support for other platforms. They are actively working on them.
It seems they wanted to get an MVP out and chose MacOS first. It might be annoying for Windows/Linux users but there's nothing wrong with the approach.
I tried this many moons ago. Mostly because I like when people try out new UI ideas. It was interesting and well done, but ultimately did not replace Firefox for me. I don't know who it is for: it's good but not obviously better than the big players, so what are their plans for it?
I want to like Arc but I found the onboarding to be very weak. How did you learn to use it in the way the designers intended? Where is the "Master Arc in 5 Minutes" video?
That's very possible since I've had it for months, but I wasn't able to find it in the 1.0 app. It mystifies me why their marketing team wouldn't post these publicly to encourage people to try it.
I couldn't agree with you more. I've been using Arc for the past month or so and it's okay but my god it has a lot of 'stuff' to learn.
They have a few videos on their YouTube channel but they're not well made imho. They lack a proper script and are far too long because of the lack of proper structure.
I am surprised they released v1 without a few polished videos explaining their USPs.
I've been using this browser all through the waitlist period and it's great!
Some of the decisions I don't like (my Bitwarden button is hidden by default which makes password filling hard - I don't have it fill automatically on page load), but overall I've enjoyed using it. My favourite features:
- split tabs (I prefer this over tiling in the WM)
- little arc
- PiP works very well for video calls
- I have a bunch of apps pinned (ChatGPT / Gmail / Calendar / Github) and a bunch of tabs below that
- I like the single action bar on Cmd-T
Overall, big fan, and I'd pay some amount for it probably.
I tried arc for a while and I didnt stick with it just because of the tiling. I just miss the flexibility of being able to have more than 3 windows visible in a useful orientation. For me it simply didnt work on a huge screen.
My biggest issue is still that i cannot export all the data in case i want to switch to something else or they fail. Apart from this the UI concept is really what we need to move browsers forward and the new approach to tabs vs windows vs bookmarks is genius.
i just tired it and its even worse: they dont use the chrome bookmarks store at all so you can export it but the bookmarks will just be completely empty!
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 335 ms ] threadThat said, I primarily use Safari still, until other browsers adopt the SMS autofill of two factor codes it's going to be tough to leave Safari for personal use. Professional use I generally use chrome, as it's tied to our work google account.
Otherwise without it Arc experience is bad: 1. importing ~5k of bookmarks (yes I use bookmarks as some link I might potentially find useful 1 year later and just tagging them like: "ml, model, ai stable, diffusion" so I can easily search for it even few years later) take very very long time 2. they all endup in folder as tabs and such big amount of bookmarks keeps left bar very slow 3. arc seem not to import tags from firefox 4. there is no bookmark manager were you can easily search by title, keywords, tags or sort by date
More on topic, seems it's still a waitlist? I go to their page and see "Join Waitlist" and "Coming in Winter 2023", so maybe page hasn't been properly updated yet?
The "why do i need an account" popup doesn't properly explain it to me either, syncing should be optional - let me use, or at least try, it without an account first.
I don't think I want to have anything to do with this company. Super cringe.
I get the impression that Arc will be a form over function product reflecting someone's understanding of good design and insisting on it. Not that I'd use a closed source browser anyway.
Terrible design decision.
It's also known as moving at crawl speed, unless you have serfs doing the real work for you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=arc.net
from real people, or probably-paid articles on tech blogs?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEcrRXW3oEYfUctetZTAWLw
Are you sure it is not product placement?
maybe not everybody who says arc is good is being paid to say that. but they are all people who accept money to say things like "arc is good". MKBHD included.
https://browsercompany.substack.com/archive
https://www.youtube.com/@TheBrowserCompany
But if you don't trust a software, then you should never install it, and you should never ask for reinsurance from the software makers. If their goal is to compromise personal computers, then they will also lie in any information they put out.
It's like being at a car dealer that you think is a criminal, and asking him to double-pinky swear that the car you're looking at wasn't stolen.
It worked for Apple so I can't blame them for trying, but it makes the entire thing feel so empty.
It looks like someone mashed the basic features Microsoft built into Edge into a a frame around Webkit with one or two cool features.
I don't want to go all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 but Microsoft Edge seems to be doing most of the features this browser seems to have and more, and it's from a software company I expect to still exist in five years.
Not sure how interested I am in a browser where I need to sign in to use. An insane decision, imo.
Changing the color of my browser isn’t really something I find worthwhile. Nor is moving the URL bar to the left; my monitor is more wide than tall, so it’s easier on my eyes and for moving my mouse to just look up as opposed to the left for navigation.
Competing against Chrome is interesting, although it’s still powered by Chromium, so nothing changes there. They are still at the mercy of features Google decides are worth pursuing, rather than W3C.
Otherwise… Good luck.
I can't leave Chrome until I can replace Google's single sign on
Immediately following this is a form for me to enter my email address so I can receive a download link. Sorry Arc, that’s not a trade I’m willing to make.
EDIT: ah ok, they ask for an account after you have downloaded 300MB of junk.
They presumably do this so that people can download it later from desktop using the emailed link. It's easy to mistake it as an attempt to harvest email IDs. The website could definitely use some text which indicates that it's Mac only at the moment.
A browser, un no circumstances, should be log-in walled.
Seemed like a great user experience as a browser, but unfortunately I uninstalled it as soon as I launched it to a sign in screen.
It does? Well, that's a showstopper right there. At least I know I can safely ignore this browser from here on out, though. Thank you!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086116
> Why do we collect personal data? > Protect against fraud, or implement additional security measures.
Another play on the verified human angle ?
Why? Not that Arc does this, but in today's modern world, we're two device creatures; a smartphone and a laptop. How do you connect the two if not with some sort of login?
> Agrawal decided early on not to try and rebuild the whole browser stack, and based Arc on Chromium like everyone else.
Ladybird this ain't. More like YACI (yet another chromium implementation).
The only question is if they can actually make money, and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that. Opera, the browser company had revenue of around $380 million last quarter, but if you don't use their browser, which is also "just" a chrome wrapper, you'd never know it.
To put it another way, Linux distros; Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc, are all "just" wrappers around the Linux Kernel. Yet "I made a Linux Kernel wrapper" is worth at least a billion, in the case of Red Hat. If you never come near that distro, you might not even see a reason for its value, but you can't argue with their sales numbers.
And where would those millions come from? Make the browser paid? It could work if it's really that good, and it'd likely be targeted at Apple users who won't mind paying. Seems risky though, eventually if you're too popular, Google will just copy some superficial stuff you're doing and people will forget about you.
> and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that
Sure they can, losing money is easy.
That's an interesting question! Paying for things is the obvious answer, but us users have been trained to feel entitled to not paying for other people's hard work. So the most interesting one in the space of "how to get people to pay for a web browser" is Replay.io, which is "just" a firefox re-skin (it's infinitely more than that) selling to a niche audience that is known for being cheap. So rather than sell to them directly, sell to their employers (it's a business tool) and get into the enterprise space, which is its own can of worms. It's a ridiculously powerful tool, if only their target market could manage to hold it correctly.
Not super sad, because I haven’t used Opera in a decade, but still a little sad.
Personally, I consider this switch to Chromium solidified Chrome and derivatives dominance - with Presto-based Opera there was always a choice. It's also a shame they didn't released the code of this engine.
That being said I’d strongly prefer the native WebKit be used since it wouldn’t make the thing 300mb.
The value, in this case, is in the UI. The engine is a commodity.
What's more absurd to me would be to use it because it's pretty and has vertical tabs as if it was the features pitched to raise money ...
I don't love Arc -- I bounced off it pretty fast -- but it's not insane to think that a VC would see the reuse of the most common browser engine as a good thing, as it means less work on the part of the developers and more of a focus on what sets the browser apart.
It seems they wanted to get an MVP out and chose MacOS first. It might be annoying for Windows/Linux users but there's nothing wrong with the approach.
You sound sore. Maybe you should take it up with the company rather than a random person on the internet?
But why? Safari is already syncing no need another account and app.
Over time maybe there will be less of a use case as other browsers copy the UI and features.
It removes a lot of tab anxiety, and helps me organise actual useful links from things that are interesting for just now.
They have a few videos on their YouTube channel but they're not well made imho. They lack a proper script and are far too long because of the lack of proper structure.
I am surprised they released v1 without a few polished videos explaining their USPs.
Some of the decisions I don't like (my Bitwarden button is hidden by default which makes password filling hard - I don't have it fill automatically on page load), but overall I've enjoyed using it. My favourite features:
- split tabs (I prefer this over tiling in the WM)
- little arc
- PiP works very well for video calls
- I have a bunch of apps pinned (ChatGPT / Gmail / Calendar / Github) and a bunch of tabs below that
- I like the single action bar on Cmd-T
Overall, big fan, and I'd pay some amount for it probably.