13 ms·

Arc Browser for Windows, now generally available

68 points by abhinavk 2y ago

niutech 2y ago
Requiring to create a user account in order to use the browser is unacceptable. Try Stack Browser or Ferdium if you don't like tabs.
indianjesus 2y ago
I tried installing it on Windows 11 education N. Installation works fine. the app does not open no matter what I try. Anyone else have the same issue?
givinguflac 2y ago
My first thought from the headline was “What’s Windows 1.0?” Then I clicked and realized it’s Arc Browser 1.0 for Windows.
- philosopher123 2y ago
  same
- danielfoster 2y ago
  The website does not even explain what Arc Browser does.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    The main site does. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/
  - starshadowx2 2y ago
    If you go to the actual arc.net site it does, this post is just linking to their documentation site with the release notes.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I seriously thought they had ported some novel browser engine to Win16, but even that, Windows 1.0, which IIRC didn't even have overlapping windows, would be ridiculous. And apparently it's based on Chromium. Porting a brand-new browser engine to long-obsolete Windows is probably plausible. Porting Chromium, a very large beast with a lot of baggage, is much less likely.
  - perrohunter 2y ago
    > which IIRC didn't even have overlapping windows that's why arc supports split browser tabs hahaha
  - Narishma 2y ago
    You don't need overlapping windows for a browser.
- deleted 2y ago
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- LukeShu 2y ago
  > “What’s Windows 1.0?” It's a desktop environment for DOS that was released in 1985 :)
- deleted 2y ago
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j_bum 2y ago
It’s exciting to see this released to the public. Arc on Windows still feels like the early versions of Arc on macOS, but I’ve genuinely enjoyed my beta access anyway. I also love how transparent the browser company is. I hope the company can find some way to stay alive, but I’m not sure what a path to profitability would look like for them. Subscription fees?
- ricokatayama 2y ago
  maybe charging for some features like AI, or even creating features for teams
jsheard 2y ago
Although it's easy to dismiss as Yet Another Chromium Fork there is some technical novelty here, because their custom frontend is probably the first serious Swift project outside of Apples ecosystem. Maybe Swift will finally get a foothold on Windows?
jaimie 2y ago
Signs that I've been reading too many retro-computing articles: I parsed the title as a browser for Windows 1.0!
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  I suspect a relatively large number of people on HN will read the headline that way. My initial reaction was “oh that’s seriously cool. I wonder what TCP/IP stack they’re using and if they got CSS working or just HTML”
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    Just getting HTML working would be mind-blowing on a Windows 1.0 machine, assuming you were running the typical hardware of the time. From what I can tell, the 80286 was still a server-grade CPU in 1985, and most PCs were still running an 8086 or 8088, which maxed out at 1 MB of RAM. Just the HTML for the Wikipedia article on the 8086 [0] is nearly 224 kilobytes, nearly 1/4 of the RAM available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086
    - hnlmorg 2y ago
      Good point. It definitely wouldn’t be powerful enough to do TLS encryption either.
      - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
        Think so? I'd think it could do TLS encryption, it just wouldn't do it FAST. It would also probably be limited in the ciphers and key exchange algorithms it would support.
        hnlmorg 2y ago
        While you’re technically correct, I don’t think it captures the spirit of my comment. Modern (in comparison) CPUs contain instructions to aid with performance, such as AES extensions. If you’re doing everything in software then you’ll be limited to the older ciphers, most of which might not even be supported by modern sites given TLS1.3 is the recommendation. For example OpenSSL doesn’t support RC and AES will benchmark much slower on CPUs (when compared with RC) without AES instructions and smaller L1 cache. Sure you could workaround that by supplementing cache with writing to persistent storage and just throwing more time at the problem. But then you’re looking at days or even weeks just to complete the handshake, let alone pulling an HTML content. By which point the novelty of getting an 8088 online would long since have worn off. So to say TLS wouldn’t be fast is an understatement. Calling it an understatement is itself an understatement :) If you remove TLS from the equation things get dramatically simpler. I’ve got a 64k 8bit micro (Amstrad CPC 464) with a WiFi adapter. The adapter handles the wireless protocols but beyond that I wrote a very simple HTML browser. Though most other similar projects I’ve seen have used a Raspberry Pi hooked up via serial to provide offloading. But that’s basically turning your 8bit Micro into a dumb terminal and thus feels somewhat like cheating.
tiahura 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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tibbydudeza 2y ago
I remember the days of TechCrunch and Flock browser :).
- deleted 2y ago
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- crowcroft 2y ago
  I'm not sure if Flock was ever actually good, but it was definitely fun! Love to see the spirit of that.
  - tibbydudeza 2y ago
    I used Flock but it was no better than FireFox - the skin/theming was nice though. It was another VC funded project that nowhere when it came how do you actually make money , that said I hope them the best - Firefox showed us the way to building a better web browser so maybe who knows.
  - bastawhiz 2y ago
    It was definitely fun when it worked! It's a shame Firefox (well, Gecko) isn't nearly as repackageable/embeddable as it used to be. Alternative gecko browsers like Camino were so good.
heavyheavy 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
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nithayakumar 2y ago
I strongly recommend people give this a try. Its got so many quality of life features (like picture in picture).
- mrec 2y ago
  Firefox has had PiP for yonks. And is this release really only for Windows 11? I thought pretty much everyone was skipping that, like Vista and 8.
  - darcien 2y ago
    Yeah the initial GA is for Windows 11 only. I'm also curious about the Windows 10 support release date. According to their newsletter, they plan to answer this question on their next YouTube video. Technically you can force your way to install Arc on Windows 10[1], but it was a rough experience when I tried few months ago during beta. [1]: Guide to installing Arc Browser on Windows 10 - https://gist.github.com/TrevTV/2044e43666a8fa4bb581d4b0c8316e91 https://gist.github.com/TrevTV/2044e43666a8fa4bb581d4b0c8316...
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    Windows 11 comes installed on most people’s computers, and among people on this site I’m pretty sure most of us have either had to update for some reason or just auto-updated one day. I don’t know anyone who is skipping Windows 11, given that it takes nontrivial effort to do so.
    - devmor 2y ago
      Conversely, I only know one person on Windows 11, and he just asked another friend for help rolling back to 10 due to how miserable support for his most used applications are. Much like Windows 8, most people on Windows 11 tend to be the technically-disinclined, which generally are not the userbase of an experimental alternative browser. Thus I too, am understandably baffled at the lack of Windows 10 support.
    - AzzyHN 2y ago
      A lot of people still dislike Windows 11, in no small part because it released in an unfinished state. I think 23H2 has finally made Windows 11 something work upgrading to, but if you're used to Windows 10, you'd never know that
dmitrygr 2y ago
Needs parens. They mean "Arc Browser [for Windows] 1.0, Now generally available". However, I got excited since I read that as "Arc Browser (for Windows 1.0), Now generally available" which would have been actually cool.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  Yeah me too. A web browser for Windows 1.0 would be neat, especially if can run on an Intel 8088 with 320k of memory!
mikae1 2y ago
Just another company without a business model heading down the highway of enshittification.
- loceng 2y ago
  I looked it up, it's an official word - at least on Wikipedia: "Enshittification is the pattern of decreasing quality observed in online services and products such as Amazon, Facebook, Google Search, Twitter, Bandcamp, Reddit, Uber, and Unity. The term was used by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022, and the American Dialect Society selected it as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also used the term platform decay to describe the same concept." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
  - mikae1 2y ago
    Last year’s Word of the Year[1] even. [1] https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/ https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshitt...
  - haunter 2y ago
    >an official word What's an unofficial word?
- darcien 2y ago
  While Arc doesn't have subscription model yet, I can see them going in that direction. From their FAQ[1]: > To do that, we’re excited about business models that align our incentives with the people who we serve: from charging companies that want to increase the productivity of their teams across the many tools they use for work, to making it easier and safer to pay for things online. So far they have been doing various small QoL for popular websites[2]. My favorite one is GitHub Live Folders[3], which is kinda like automatic bookmark/pinned tabs for your own GH PRs. I can see people paying for these collections of small nice things if they keep adding more. Of course they also AI-powered features, dubbed Arc Max[4]. Personally I often use the page summarizer, which feels like lite version of Kagi Summarizer. Right now seems like they're burning money by running it for free. But they could opt to charge money, e.g. for more powerful model. Disclaimer: I'm just a happy Arc user, it's not perfect, but I use it daily side by side with Firefox. [1]: https://arc.net/faq https://arc.net/faq [2]: https://arc.net/integrations https://arc.net/integrations [3]: https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/22731612065815-Automatic-Github-Live-Folders https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/22731612065815-A... [4]: https://arc.net/max https://arc.net/max
sebmellen 2y ago
I tried Arc recently. It’s okay. But why is the Arc Browser package size >700 MB? It’s double the size of Chromium! Where is all that bloat coming from?
- dantondwa 2y ago
  Their interface on top of Chromium is written in Swift, so they're bundling all the stuff that is necessary to make Swift run on Windows, top of of Chromium.
  - agsnu 2y ago
    It's >700MB on macOS too, though.
sanex 2y ago
Started using Arc on windows a few months ago. Everyone I have recommended it to loves it. It's hard to say exactly why. You can duplicate a lot of the functionality with tree style tabs and other extensions but for a work browser it's been a dream.
JohnTHaller 2y ago
Arc Browser 1.0 for Windows 11, now generally available
abhinavk 2y ago
Submission notes: The submission was earlier titled: Arc Browser for Windows 1.0, now generally available which is confusing as you can see in the comment thread. It's the 1.0 release of Arc Browser for Windows.
extr 2y ago
I started using Arc ~1 year ago. I like it's model of tab management a lot, it's made using the browser much easier. Around ~2 months ago I thought maybe it was running slow and went back to Edge. Well, never really got a clear sense of if Arc was slow, but I missed it's tab management features so much, I had to switch back. To summarize the Arc Tab Management Philosophy: - 3 Groups: Pinned Tabs, Favorites Tabs, "Regular" Tabs - Pinned tabs never go away - Favorites are "sticky" to the original URL you saved them under. So you can navigate within that tab, but you can always click to get back to the original favorited URL. - Regular tabs are auto-archived if not used in 24 hours. And some other features: - Vertical tab bar - Command palette for searching/opening new tabs - Folder structure for organizing favorite tabs. - "Spaces" (like virtual desktops) which tbh I don't see much use from. - Split tabs - Some AI features they are pushing now. Don't really use these much either. - Lots of integrations, eg, hover to see your GCal. They just pushed a new "live folder" feature that auto organizes all your open GH PRs. This is super useful. All in all, I might actually pay for this if they make it subscription only. For me it's the difference between having 150 tabs open in Edge (many of them duplicates or one-offs) or 20-30 tabs open in Arc, and never thinking too much about tab management. All in all I think it points to the fact that the browser space is sorely under-optimized for power users. The #1 tool everyone uses day in and day out and most people just accept having 200 unmanageable chrome tabs open as the cost of doing business?
- pprotas 2y ago
  Spaces are great in combination with profiles. I have a space/profile for work and personal, since my work requires a few different extensions, Google login, etc
jrflowers 2y ago
It is good to see that they are still requiring you tell them your email address to try the browser. Too many browsers attempt to gain “market share” by dirty tricks like “being easily available” and losing focus on the obvious #1 priority, amassing the largest possible email list
- toastercat 2y ago
  Agree 100%. I only hope that they start requiring users input their mailing addresses and social security numbers in order to download the browser. Then it'd be a no-brainer.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    I like this idea. Why shouldn’t The Browser Company know where I live? They could mail me important browser update news, which is perfectly logical because it is imperative that The Browser Company has a way to contact me directly
dantondwa 2y ago
I do not understand how a browser can launch in 2024 without caring for privacy. Arc is probably the worst browser ever in this regard, making it mandatory to have an account.
- admax88qqq 2y ago
  Probably cause most users don't actually care, otherwise Firefox would have more than single digit market share.
  - jacooper 2y ago
    Braves success proves that's Firefox's problem, and not that user's don't care about privacy.
    - admax88qqq 2y ago
      > Braves success Brave has <1% market share.
      - jacooper 2y ago
        They are growing, something that can't be said about Firefox.
        ShakataGaNai 2y ago
        Brave would grow more if it stopped stuffing in every crypto blockchain feature it possibly could. I swear, every 3rd update adds some new annoying feature to turn off. I've been daily driving Brave on every machine and device I have for a year or so now... and I really wish they would have just stuck with the "Privacy Focused Chromium" thing. They've wandered far down this path of "lets just add every feature that comes to mind" and it's really not helping it's usefulness.
        jacooper 2y ago
ThinkBeat 2y ago
Arc is yet another version of Chrome(ium) With some parts added and some parts removed.
- p4ul 2y ago
  I've only used Arc a bit, and generally had a good experience, but I do wish that they had chosen not to rely Chromium. I understand that would have massively increased the amount of work required initially, but I really worry about our collective reliance on Chromium. I don't know... maybe I'm a pessimist.
  - ThinkBeat 2y ago
    Whenever you go from having healthy competition to a monoculture it is grounds to worry. We have Firefox and Safari still though so it is not quite that dark yet but we are getting there. Making a browser these days from scratch, or even keeping up with the rest is incredibly time consuming and expensive.
    - p4ul 2y ago
      They are going to have to pry Firefox out of my cold, dead hands!
exabrial 2y ago
Does this still require an account? If, I'm hard out.
- martinnss 2y ago
  [flagged]
dlivingston 2y ago
They're using Swift for this, right? How do they implement the GUI (when SwiftUI/AppKit are obv. not on Windows)?
- favorited 2y ago
  They wrote a Swift language projection for WinRT, akin to Microsoft's projections for standard C++ and Rust. https://github.com/thebrowsercompany/swift-winrt https://github.com/thebrowsercompany/swift-winrt https://github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt https://github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs
dmje 2y ago
I’d recommend people give it a try - if only to see what some properly different thinking looks like about what a browser could be. There are some really interesting UI things going on in Arc, and if all it does is makes you go “oo, interesting” then it’s worth it. There are so many boring paradigms repeated all the time, particularly in browser ui’s that it’s worth a shot. And to anyone bemoaning the “must have account” thing - this is HN, I’m sure you’ve all got the technical nouse to set up a burner account if you’re that uncomfortable. Or SimpleLogin.io - another HN favourite ;-)
- rchaud 2y ago
  If you can't even use it without an account, then that's an issue. It's not like Kagi where using the tool requires compute credits on their side, so offering it without a login wall isn't possible. Mozilla wants me to sign up for a Firefox account too. The difference is that it's entirely optional and the browser works just fine without it.
  - dmje 2y ago
    It’s irritating, sure. But I just don’t see it as a show stopper?
    - rchaud 2y ago
      It is, because other browsers don't require it. I would not have tried out Chrome in '08 if I needed to log into it. What's next? 2FA to secure access to the thing so I can 2FA all the other things I have logins for? Besides giving them an open invitation to spam your email, login based access tells me that they're doing what Chrome is, attaching your browser history to your identity. Google does this because they need a way to fuel their behavioural ad machine without cookies. I imagine Arc is doing it for the same reason - monetization.
- nipperkinfeet 2y ago
  There seem to be a lot of PR phonies in the comments area. I tried it out and found that the UI is quite confusing and difficult to use. It looks absurd due to its non-customizable design. Rounded corners in your page view, really? I removed it instantly. Since Firefox and Edge have split view, vertical tabs, and profile synchronization much ahead of this browser, I'm not sure who it's meant for.
fl0ki 2y ago
I'm getting the feeling that Arc just sounds cool so everything has to be named Arc, including the programming language used to implement HN itself.
martinnss 2y ago
I'm not sure if simply having an attractive UI is enough to disrupt the browser industry. For Arc to make a dent in the desktop browser market, they need game-changing features like the 'Browse for Me' available on desktop
pentagrama 2y ago
Installed it, fancy onboarding for gen z and all that, but wow, a wall of mandatory Arc account creation to start using the browser. At least they require * only * email. Thanks that email mask services like Firefox Relay exists, I'm using it for everything lately, with the push of surveillance from tech companies and data breaches I feel a bit safer at least.
AiAi 2y ago
I was surprised to know that it's only for Windows 11. I can't remember a program that launched without supporting the previous version of Windows. It seems to have a workaround to install it on Windows 10, but I guess I don't want to try it that bad.
- bl4kers 2y ago
  About 70% of Windows users are still on 10
ShakataGaNai 2y ago
After a friend mentioned Arc to me today, I gave it a try. I'm a long time Brave user and have no love lost for Chrome these days (though I need to stick to Chromium browsers for plugin compatibility reasons). * First launch is a full screen, loud ass, unskippable video. I literally Cmd+Q'd the browser right there and then. If it wasn't for my friends insistence I try it, that would have been the end of my Arc experiment right there. * The "Login before you start" is stupid, I get it, but stupid. As a techy who uses lots of devices, something that has built in sync is actually appealing to me. * The settings is a strange mix of UI/UX's. There is clearly some quasi-chrome settings in browser, but then a settings screen that is more traditional Mac pop-out style. Sometimes one links to the other and it's...disjointed. * "Max" the AI tooling has potential. While I love ChatGPT, I don't need AI in everything and it really annoys me when AI is shoved into products unnecessarily... so far so good on Max. The "ask on page" feature works surprisingly well and the 5 second previews is cool on a site like HN. * ChatGPT in the command bar. Cool, I guess. It's just a quick way to get to your existing chatgpt account. I'm glad it's my account and not yours - so win for that. Too bad Cmd+Opt+G is taken by Google Drive. * It's tab management is ... fine? That's something that will clearly take some getting use to. * Spaces & Profiles. I don't like that a new profile needs to have a new space create first. It's unintuitive for those of us who are used to profiles from Chrome. I get that Arc is trying to allow us to organize. But I want two VERY separate worlds. One work, one personal. Just allow me to create a new profile directly from the Profiles settings, and open that into a new window. Like every other chrome-clone * The tiny stupid URL in the left bar is... tiny and useless and stupid. But you can View > Show Toolbar easily - so that's good. In a world in which the web is an ever more dangerous place, obfuscating the URL to the point in which I can't even read the domain... is poorly thought through. * The import system seems to work extremely well. It imported all my plugins (which all work, awesome) and even my session cookies... so getting "up and running" is much easier. * Sync only sync's open tabs. So it's effectively useless.

68 points by abhinavk 2y ago

Requiring to create a user account in order to use the browser is unacceptable. Try Stack Browser or Ferdium if you don't like tabs.

indianjesus 2y ago

I tried installing it on Windows 11 education N. Installation works fine. the app does not open no matter what I try. Anyone else have the same issue?

givinguflac 2y ago

My first thought from the headline was “What’s Windows 1.0?” Then I clicked and realized it’s Arc Browser 1.0 for Windows.

philosopher123 2y ago
same
danielfoster 2y ago
The website does not even explain what Arc Browser does.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  The main site does. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/
- starshadowx2 2y ago
  If you go to the actual arc.net site it does, this post is just linking to their documentation site with the release notes.
asveikau 2y ago
I seriously thought they had ported some novel browser engine to Win16, but even that, Windows 1.0, which IIRC didn't even have overlapping windows, would be ridiculous. And apparently it's based on Chromium. Porting a brand-new browser engine to long-obsolete Windows is probably plausible. Porting Chromium, a very large beast with a lot of baggage, is much less likely.
- perrohunter 2y ago
  > which IIRC didn't even have overlapping windows that's why arc supports split browser tabs hahaha
- Narishma 2y ago
  You don't need overlapping windows for a browser.
deleted 2y ago
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LukeShu 2y ago
> “What’s Windows 1.0?” It's a desktop environment for DOS that was released in 1985 :)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

j_bum 2y ago

It’s exciting to see this released to the public. Arc on Windows still feels like the early versions of Arc on macOS, but I’ve genuinely enjoyed my beta access anyway. I also love how transparent the browser company is. I hope the company can find some way to stay alive, but I’m not sure what a path to profitability would look like for them. Subscription fees?

ricokatayama 2y ago
maybe charging for some features like AI, or even creating features for teams

jsheard 2y ago

Although it's easy to dismiss as Yet Another Chromium Fork there is some technical novelty here, because their custom frontend is probably the first serious Swift project outside of Apples ecosystem. Maybe Swift will finally get a foothold on Windows?

jaimie 2y ago

Signs that I've been reading too many retro-computing articles: I parsed the title as a browser for Windows 1.0!

hnlmorg 2y ago
I suspect a relatively large number of people on HN will read the headline that way. My initial reaction was “oh that’s seriously cool. I wonder what TCP/IP stack they’re using and if they got CSS working or just HTML”
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  Just getting HTML working would be mind-blowing on a Windows 1.0 machine, assuming you were running the typical hardware of the time. From what I can tell, the 80286 was still a server-grade CPU in 1985, and most PCs were still running an 8086 or 8088, which maxed out at 1 MB of RAM. Just the HTML for the Wikipedia article on the 8086 [0] is nearly 224 kilobytes, nearly 1/4 of the RAM available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086
  - hnlmorg 2y ago
    Good point. It definitely wouldn’t be powerful enough to do TLS encryption either.
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      Think so? I'd think it could do TLS encryption, it just wouldn't do it FAST. It would also probably be limited in the ciphers and key exchange algorithms it would support.
      - hnlmorg 2y ago
        While you’re technically correct, I don’t think it captures the spirit of my comment. Modern (in comparison) CPUs contain instructions to aid with performance, such as AES extensions. If you’re doing everything in software then you’ll be limited to the older ciphers, most of which might not even be supported by modern sites given TLS1.3 is the recommendation. For example OpenSSL doesn’t support RC and AES will benchmark much slower on CPUs (when compared with RC) without AES instructions and smaller L1 cache. Sure you could workaround that by supplementing cache with writing to persistent storage and just throwing more time at the problem. But then you’re looking at days or even weeks just to complete the handshake, let alone pulling an HTML content. By which point the novelty of getting an 8088 online would long since have worn off. So to say TLS wouldn’t be fast is an understatement. Calling it an understatement is itself an understatement :) If you remove TLS from the equation things get dramatically simpler. I’ve got a 64k 8bit micro (Amstrad CPC 464) with a WiFi adapter. The adapter handles the wireless protocols but beyond that I wrote a very simple HTML browser. Though most other similar projects I’ve seen have used a Raspberry Pi hooked up via serial to provide offloading. But that’s basically turning your 8bit Micro into a dumb terminal and thus feels somewhat like cheating.

tiahura 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago
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tibbydudeza 2y ago

I remember the days of TechCrunch and Flock browser :).

deleted 2y ago
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crowcroft 2y ago
I'm not sure if Flock was ever actually good, but it was definitely fun! Love to see the spirit of that.
- tibbydudeza 2y ago
  I used Flock but it was no better than FireFox - the skin/theming was nice though. It was another VC funded project that nowhere when it came how do you actually make money , that said I hope them the best - Firefox showed us the way to building a better web browser so maybe who knows.
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  It was definitely fun when it worked! It's a shame Firefox (well, Gecko) isn't nearly as repackageable/embeddable as it used to be. Alternative gecko browsers like Camino were so good.

heavyheavy 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
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nithayakumar 2y ago

I strongly recommend people give this a try. Its got so many quality of life features (like picture in picture).

mrec 2y ago
Firefox has had PiP for yonks. And is this release really only for Windows 11? I thought pretty much everyone was skipping that, like Vista and 8.
- darcien 2y ago
  Yeah the initial GA is for Windows 11 only. I'm also curious about the Windows 10 support release date. According to their newsletter, they plan to answer this question on their next YouTube video. Technically you can force your way to install Arc on Windows 10[1], but it was a rough experience when I tried few months ago during beta. [1]: Guide to installing Arc Browser on Windows 10 - https://gist.github.com/TrevTV/2044e43666a8fa4bb581d4b0c8316e91 https://gist.github.com/TrevTV/2044e43666a8fa4bb581d4b0c8316...
- Uehreka 2y ago
  Windows 11 comes installed on most people’s computers, and among people on this site I’m pretty sure most of us have either had to update for some reason or just auto-updated one day. I don’t know anyone who is skipping Windows 11, given that it takes nontrivial effort to do so.
  - devmor 2y ago
    Conversely, I only know one person on Windows 11, and he just asked another friend for help rolling back to 10 due to how miserable support for his most used applications are. Much like Windows 8, most people on Windows 11 tend to be the technically-disinclined, which generally are not the userbase of an experimental alternative browser. Thus I too, am understandably baffled at the lack of Windows 10 support.
  - AzzyHN 2y ago
    A lot of people still dislike Windows 11, in no small part because it released in an unfinished state. I think 23H2 has finally made Windows 11 something work upgrading to, but if you're used to Windows 10, you'd never know that

dmitrygr 2y ago

Needs parens. They mean "Arc Browser [for Windows] 1.0, Now generally available". However, I got excited since I read that as "Arc Browser (for Windows 1.0), Now generally available" which would have been actually cool.

goosedragons 2y ago
Yeah me too. A web browser for Windows 1.0 would be neat, especially if can run on an Intel 8088 with 320k of memory!

mikae1 2y ago

Just another company without a business model heading down the highway of enshittification.

loceng 2y ago
I looked it up, it's an official word - at least on Wikipedia: "Enshittification is the pattern of decreasing quality observed in online services and products such as Amazon, Facebook, Google Search, Twitter, Bandcamp, Reddit, Uber, and Unity. The term was used by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022, and the American Dialect Society selected it as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also used the term platform decay to describe the same concept." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- mikae1 2y ago
  Last year’s Word of the Year[1] even. [1] https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/ https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshitt...
- haunter 2y ago
  >an official word What's an unofficial word?
darcien 2y ago
While Arc doesn't have subscription model yet, I can see them going in that direction. From their FAQ[1]: > To do that, we’re excited about business models that align our incentives with the people who we serve: from charging companies that want to increase the productivity of their teams across the many tools they use for work, to making it easier and safer to pay for things online. So far they have been doing various small QoL for popular websites[2]. My favorite one is GitHub Live Folders[3], which is kinda like automatic bookmark/pinned tabs for your own GH PRs. I can see people paying for these collections of small nice things if they keep adding more. Of course they also AI-powered features, dubbed Arc Max[4]. Personally I often use the page summarizer, which feels like lite version of Kagi Summarizer. Right now seems like they're burning money by running it for free. But they could opt to charge money, e.g. for more powerful model. Disclaimer: I'm just a happy Arc user, it's not perfect, but I use it daily side by side with Firefox. [1]: https://arc.net/faq https://arc.net/faq [2]: https://arc.net/integrations https://arc.net/integrations [3]: https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/22731612065815-Automatic-Github-Live-Folders https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/22731612065815-A... [4]: https://arc.net/max https://arc.net/max

sebmellen 2y ago

I tried Arc recently. It’s okay. But why is the Arc Browser package size >700 MB? It’s double the size of Chromium! Where is all that bloat coming from?

dantondwa 2y ago
Their interface on top of Chromium is written in Swift, so they're bundling all the stuff that is necessary to make Swift run on Windows, top of of Chromium.
- agsnu 2y ago
  It's >700MB on macOS too, though.

sanex 2y ago

Started using Arc on windows a few months ago. Everyone I have recommended it to loves it. It's hard to say exactly why. You can duplicate a lot of the functionality with tree style tabs and other extensions but for a work browser it's been a dream.

JohnTHaller 2y ago

Arc Browser 1.0 for Windows 11, now generally available

abhinavk 2y ago

Submission notes: The submission was earlier titled: Arc Browser for Windows 1.0, now generally available which is confusing as you can see in the comment thread. It's the 1.0 release of Arc Browser for Windows.

extr 2y ago

I started using Arc ~1 year ago. I like it's model of tab management a lot, it's made using the browser much easier. Around ~2 months ago I thought maybe it was running slow and went back to Edge. Well, never really got a clear sense of if Arc was slow, but I missed it's tab management features so much, I had to switch back. To summarize the Arc Tab Management Philosophy: - 3 Groups: Pinned Tabs, Favorites Tabs, "Regular" Tabs - Pinned tabs never go away - Favorites are "sticky" to the original URL you saved them under. So you can navigate within that tab, but you can always click to get back to the original favorited URL. - Regular tabs are auto-archived if not used in 24 hours. And some other features: - Vertical tab bar - Command palette for searching/opening new tabs - Folder structure for organizing favorite tabs. - "Spaces" (like virtual desktops) which tbh I don't see much use from. - Split tabs - Some AI features they are pushing now. Don't really use these much either. - Lots of integrations, eg, hover to see your GCal. They just pushed a new "live folder" feature that auto organizes all your open GH PRs. This is super useful. All in all, I might actually pay for this if they make it subscription only. For me it's the difference between having 150 tabs open in Edge (many of them duplicates or one-offs) or 20-30 tabs open in Arc, and never thinking too much about tab management. All in all I think it points to the fact that the browser space is sorely under-optimized for power users. The #1 tool everyone uses day in and day out and most people just accept having 200 unmanageable chrome tabs open as the cost of doing business?

pprotas 2y ago
Spaces are great in combination with profiles. I have a space/profile for work and personal, since my work requires a few different extensions, Google login, etc

jrflowers 2y ago

It is good to see that they are still requiring you tell them your email address to try the browser. Too many browsers attempt to gain “market share” by dirty tricks like “being easily available” and losing focus on the obvious #1 priority, amassing the largest possible email list

toastercat 2y ago
Agree 100%. I only hope that they start requiring users input their mailing addresses and social security numbers in order to download the browser. Then it'd be a no-brainer.
- jrflowers 2y ago
  I like this idea. Why shouldn’t The Browser Company know where I live? They could mail me important browser update news, which is perfectly logical because it is imperative that The Browser Company has a way to contact me directly

dantondwa 2y ago

I do not understand how a browser can launch in 2024 without caring for privacy. Arc is probably the worst browser ever in this regard, making it mandatory to have an account.

admax88qqq 2y ago
Probably cause most users don't actually care, otherwise Firefox would have more than single digit market share.
- jacooper 2y ago
  Braves success proves that's Firefox's problem, and not that user's don't care about privacy.
  - admax88qqq 2y ago
    > Braves success Brave has <1% market share.
    - jacooper 2y ago
      They are growing, something that can't be said about Firefox.
      - ShakataGaNai 2y ago
        Brave would grow more if it stopped stuffing in every crypto blockchain feature it possibly could. I swear, every 3rd update adds some new annoying feature to turn off. I've been daily driving Brave on every machine and device I have for a year or so now... and I really wish they would have just stuck with the "Privacy Focused Chromium" thing. They've wandered far down this path of "lets just add every feature that comes to mind" and it's really not helping it's usefulness.
        jacooper 2y ago

ThinkBeat 2y ago

Arc is yet another version of Chrome(ium) With some parts added and some parts removed.

p4ul 2y ago
I've only used Arc a bit, and generally had a good experience, but I do wish that they had chosen not to rely Chromium. I understand that would have massively increased the amount of work required initially, but I really worry about our collective reliance on Chromium. I don't know... maybe I'm a pessimist.
- ThinkBeat 2y ago
  Whenever you go from having healthy competition to a monoculture it is grounds to worry. We have Firefox and Safari still though so it is not quite that dark yet but we are getting there. Making a browser these days from scratch, or even keeping up with the rest is incredibly time consuming and expensive.
  - p4ul 2y ago
    They are going to have to pry Firefox out of my cold, dead hands!

exabrial 2y ago

Does this still require an account? If, I'm hard out.

martinnss 2y ago
[flagged]

dlivingston 2y ago

They're using Swift for this, right? How do they implement the GUI (when SwiftUI/AppKit are obv. not on Windows)?

favorited 2y ago
They wrote a Swift language projection for WinRT, akin to Microsoft's projections for standard C++ and Rust. https://github.com/thebrowsercompany/swift-winrt https://github.com/thebrowsercompany/swift-winrt https://github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt https://github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs

dmje 2y ago

I’d recommend people give it a try - if only to see what some properly different thinking looks like about what a browser could be. There are some really interesting UI things going on in Arc, and if all it does is makes you go “oo, interesting” then it’s worth it. There are so many boring paradigms repeated all the time, particularly in browser ui’s that it’s worth a shot. And to anyone bemoaning the “must have account” thing - this is HN, I’m sure you’ve all got the technical nouse to set up a burner account if you’re that uncomfortable. Or SimpleLogin.io - another HN favourite ;-)

rchaud 2y ago
If you can't even use it without an account, then that's an issue. It's not like Kagi where using the tool requires compute credits on their side, so offering it without a login wall isn't possible. Mozilla wants me to sign up for a Firefox account too. The difference is that it's entirely optional and the browser works just fine without it.
- dmje 2y ago
  It’s irritating, sure. But I just don’t see it as a show stopper?
  - rchaud 2y ago
    It is, because other browsers don't require it. I would not have tried out Chrome in '08 if I needed to log into it. What's next? 2FA to secure access to the thing so I can 2FA all the other things I have logins for? Besides giving them an open invitation to spam your email, login based access tells me that they're doing what Chrome is, attaching your browser history to your identity. Google does this because they need a way to fuel their behavioural ad machine without cookies. I imagine Arc is doing it for the same reason - monetization.
nipperkinfeet 2y ago
There seem to be a lot of PR phonies in the comments area. I tried it out and found that the UI is quite confusing and difficult to use. It looks absurd due to its non-customizable design. Rounded corners in your page view, really? I removed it instantly. Since Firefox and Edge have split view, vertical tabs, and profile synchronization much ahead of this browser, I'm not sure who it's meant for.

fl0ki 2y ago

I'm getting the feeling that Arc just sounds cool so everything has to be named Arc, including the programming language used to implement HN itself.

martinnss 2y ago

I'm not sure if simply having an attractive UI is enough to disrupt the browser industry. For Arc to make a dent in the desktop browser market, they need game-changing features like the 'Browse for Me' available on desktop

pentagrama 2y ago

Installed it, fancy onboarding for gen z and all that, but wow, a wall of mandatory Arc account creation to start using the browser. At least they require * only * email. Thanks that email mask services like Firefox Relay exists, I'm using it for everything lately, with the push of surveillance from tech companies and data breaches I feel a bit safer at least.

AiAi 2y ago

I was surprised to know that it's only for Windows 11. I can't remember a program that launched without supporting the previous version of Windows. It seems to have a workaround to install it on Windows 10, but I guess I don't want to try it that bad.

bl4kers 2y ago
About 70% of Windows users are still on 10

ShakataGaNai 2y ago

After a friend mentioned Arc to me today, I gave it a try. I'm a long time Brave user and have no love lost for Chrome these days (though I need to stick to Chromium browsers for plugin compatibility reasons). * First launch is a full screen, loud ass, unskippable video. I literally Cmd+Q'd the browser right there and then. If it wasn't for my friends insistence I try it, that would have been the end of my Arc experiment right there. * The "Login before you start" is stupid, I get it, but stupid. As a techy who uses lots of devices, something that has built in sync is actually appealing to me. * The settings is a strange mix of UI/UX's. There is clearly some quasi-chrome settings in browser, but then a settings screen that is more traditional Mac pop-out style. Sometimes one links to the other and it's...disjointed. * "Max" the AI tooling has potential. While I love ChatGPT, I don't need AI in everything and it really annoys me when AI is shoved into products unnecessarily... so far so good on Max. The "ask on page" feature works surprisingly well and the 5 second previews is cool on a site like HN. * ChatGPT in the command bar. Cool, I guess. It's just a quick way to get to your existing chatgpt account. I'm glad it's my account and not yours - so win for that. Too bad Cmd+Opt+G is taken by Google Drive. * It's tab management is ... fine? That's something that will clearly take some getting use to. * Spaces & Profiles. I don't like that a new profile needs to have a new space create first. It's unintuitive for those of us who are used to profiles from Chrome. I get that Arc is trying to allow us to organize. But I want two VERY separate worlds. One work, one personal. Just allow me to create a new profile directly from the Profiles settings, and open that into a new window. Like every other chrome-clone * The tiny stupid URL in the left bar is... tiny and useless and stupid. But you can View > Show Toolbar easily - so that's good. In a world in which the web is an ever more dangerous place, obfuscating the URL to the point in which I can't even read the domain... is poorly thought through. * The import system seems to work extremely well. It imported all my plugins (which all work, awesome) and even my session cookies... so getting "up and running" is much easier. * Sync only sync's open tabs. So it's effectively useless.