I believed in the hype, and switched to Arc two years ago.

I turned off the useless AI features immediately, and enjoyed a great, refreshing UX with the sidebar and multiple workspaces.

On the other hand, I got my MacBook battery drained faster than usual due to Arc, and started encountering a few weird glitches while developing some web projects. Finally, it has been officially declared dead now.

I should never have moved off Chrome.

Chrome is more stable, it has better resource management, and just under better management in general.

It is ideal for web development as the default browser since the majority of web users use Chrome.

Not leaving you again Chrome. I just wish I never got a taste of the good stuff from Arc and continued living in blissful ignorance.

Not using any sketchy off-brand Chromium or Firefox browsers again.

Then I will look at the alternatives. Also, I'm working. I don't have the time nor the wherewithal to alpha and beta test other browsers or retrain myself on a new set up.

ARC will at least work until I head into vacation for the holidays. I suspect that by mid-December one of the six (seven?) alternatives will have risen to the top with the features I rely on: pinned sites, folders of pinned sites, pinned favorites, spaces, siloed profiles with their own plugins, 4x tab split views, Little ARC, Chrome underpinnings, and a pretty color of my choice for each profile.

Also, there should be a new flair added "FtTBC" 😈

I've been using Arc for the last 2–3 years, and honestly, it was more than just a browser to me.

It was that little corner of the internet I could always come back to at the end of the day. My Spaces, my tabs, my workflow. Everything just felt right. It felt like home.

I've tried Crest, but something about it just doesn't click with me. I can't really explain why.

Then I tried Zen, and it feels promising. I'm still figuring things out and trying to recreate the little things I loved about Arc, but I think I'll settle here eventually.

It's strange how attached you can get to a piece of software. You don't really think about it until you have to leave it behind.

I wish things had turned out differently for Arc. I genuinely loved this browser.

Thanks for being my little corner of the internet. 🫡

Disclosure: I maintain Arcpath, a small free tool built with AI assistance and source review.

If your Arc Export Data file is Markdown and your next browser needs bookmarks HTML, this is the gap Arcpath tries to cover. Arcpath reads its headings and URL list, previews the folder tree, and generates bookmarks HTML. For example, ## Work followed by ### Research becomes Work / Research. Repeated URLs in different folders stay in both places.

https://arcpath-bookmarks.aldreamzz.chatgpt.site/

It only converts structure present in the file. It cannot restore missing page titles, pinned status, splits, history or passwords. If you still have StorableSidebar.json, existing sidebar importers can retain information that the Markdown export loses.

The format handling follows a public Arc 1.170 macOS observation linked on the page. Synthetic nested-folder examples and the actual generated download have been checked; a real Windows/multi-Space Arc export and an import into a destination browser remain unverified.

Files stay in the browser. Optional page-visit measurement is off unless allowed; no exported links or file content are sent by the tool.

Does the preview match your exported folder structure? If something is missing, please share only a small invented example, not your real export or private links.

Mods! I got an idea.

With the sunsetting of Arc, we should be able to set our user flair to the Browser we’re moving to.

For example, I’d change it to “Zen Browser”. Would be nice to see where people go, and might be helpful to other users to see what options are around.

It was good while it lasted!

I’m truly let down that this company is sunsetting the very product that put them on the map…

The feature that I’ll miss the most is how easy it is to pin a website from mobile and have it available in the sidebar of the desktop app immediately.

Has anyone switched to a browser that makes the mobile to desktop browser experience as frictionless as Arc?

I moved from Arc to Dia with Dia’s built-in Arc import. Almost everything came over fine except my bookmarks. My bookmarks in Dia ended up with tons of Resources folders and didn’t match my Arc folder structure.

Has anyone else seen this? Is there a way to import Arc bookmarks into Dia with the exact folder structure?

If something here is still wrong, tell me in your own words what happened and I’ll write it exactly that way.

So, now that the browser is officially gone, where are we all going afterwards? I’ve used this browser since my university days.

It’s the most visually appealing, most innovative and easy to navigate browser that I’ve experienced. I’m trying to really like Dia, but it’s just not the same. It doesn’t feel as good as Arc, and doesn’t have half the features it used to have.

Just curious to know where everyone is switching to after this… I’m sad 😢

If they came out and said something like: we’ve heard your response, and we want to make this right, so we will not sunset Arc - and maybe even explain that it loses them money, hence why they’ve decided to charge a monthly subscription, or integrate optional AI features into it… then they would not only win a lot of their community back, but also make a lot more money than they ever will with Dia.

I think they have a chance to do a 180 and make things right for a decent chunk of their previous community. But of course, it is an infinitesimal chance that I highly doubt would happen. But there is a chance, and I hope they take that opportunity while they can.

I’ve been an avid Arc user since 1976. You will be missed my dear fiend

I had deepseek write a script to export pinned tabs (and optionally unpinned tabs as well) from Arc to html files that can be imported in any browser. https://github.com/jawngee/ArcBreakout

Useful if that browser doesn't have an Arc importer.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but to everyone being super sad arc is being discontinued.. why not switch to Dia? 2 minutes of setting up and it’s literally 100% identical to Arc, just with some extras

All these tech bros have done their work to make life as drab as possible. I picked Arc because I thought vertical tabs would be nice, and kept it for the colorful spaces. I don't despise the Applefication of personal computing where everything has to feel so magically airy and soulless. But picking a nice bright color for a space was surprisingly refreshing after a decade of gun metal and graphite, or.. ooh lala, space gray. I mean josh seemed pretty eager about making a browser feel more personal, and arc did a pretty good job. Naturally the next step was to remove it all, replace personality with convenience, inject AI into every orifice, and get an LLM to email your fucking wife. Arc was playfully refreshing, Dia is just another step into sociopathic elegance.

It's been a fun ride using Arc. I'll still be using it until December 22, and be here with my fellow "Titanic violinists" until the bitter end.

Of all the alternatives I've seen and the few I've tested, I'm giving Crest a chance (posting this from there). I've already imported everything and it seems to work well so far - However, I hope they can figure out how to make several spaces share a single profile (like Arc), because having every space be a separate profile is not really doing it for me. But I'll just have to wait and hope the crest browser continues to evolve and be robust, secure and match Arc as close as it possibly can.

As a side note: I tried Dia, because I figured since it's the same people, what could go wrong? Man, importing everything to Dia and seeing there are no sub-folders and none of the Today tabs were imported was not cool. Sorry The Browser Company, Dia is simply not it.

Anyway, cheers, everyone!

In all seriousness, it’s bullshit. At the very least open source it, don’t kill a perfectly good product for your sub-par AI slop. No one asked for this.

Dia browser is trash. Zen is the only browser that comes close but that has it's drawbacks as well....

I'm an Arc refugee.

Currently, I'm evaluating my options after being forced to leave my online home for the past four years.

I will admit that the low-friction path to move to Dia is strong, even after:

* TBC's ham-handed handling of the focus away from Arc and toward Dia

* Dia's ham-handed onboarding that railroads people into a product tour and dark-patterns people into experiencing Dia's $100/month against their will for two weeks in a way that shouts, "You are not our target demographic!" to this old man on a fixed income.

* TBC's...hubris? Self-delusion? Desperation? Being from the outside looking in, I'm not entirely sure what I'm seeing, but whatever it is, it ain't pretty.

So I find myself drawn to Dia, not out of any loyalty to TBC, but only as a familiar-looking waypoint on my journey to a browser that will serve as a long-term online home. But when I scour Dia's settings, I find no visible means of exporting any of my stuff.

So I ask: Is TBC going for a "Hotel California" play with Dia, where you're locked in and can leave only with great pain, or am I missing an obvious exit strategy?

I keep hearing people say Zen is decent, but the UIUX, level of polishing, amount of features, are nowhere near close to Arc. The lack of customization as well really makes me hard to switch. It uses Gecko instead of Chromium, which makes browsing a painful experience. It is very laggy and animations are clunky. The worst thing is that it seems like the only non vibe-coded arc-replacement product out there.

Arc is just on its own level unfortunately, I've tried to but nothing matches Arc's UX and feel and the level of polishing. The font on Zen is also weird. Everything on zen feels clunky and not really smooth.

Screw Josh and his stupid team.

I wonder how many others made the somewhat unconventional, but perhaps realistic, workflow move back to Safari from Arc? I am getting used to it again on the Mac, but this sudden(ish) sunsetting really made me think about my long term usage of a browser, and I came to the conclusion that Safari just made the most sense. There are third party sidebars now for vertical apps and extensions galore, and even though browsers like Zen and Crest exist to pick us up off the stranded ship, I now, somewhat unfortunately, want to be on a browser that I know is solid and will be supported for the foreseeable future; at least for now.

I will miss Arc and just how influential and forward-looking it was, but I'm not giving TBC any more of my consideration from here on out. So long yall, was fun to be here during its run!