61–70 of 93 posts
NOTHING mentioned on this page can't be done natively or with extensions in other browsers. What is so revolutionary about it? And I won't even mention the landing page for the browser itself which is just 2 page scrolls of "Arc is a browser and more..." with signup links for the wainting list, no description of what it is, what it does, nothing.
The color and theme system is pretty cool, but hard to use. I sent some feedback to the Arc team about it and got an automated response with no follow-up.
The mobile version, at least on iOS, is atrocious.
A lot of their new features like screenshots, editing web pages, etc look very neat, but in my weeks of use I haven’t found a single practical application.
Overall I’d like to see more competition in the browser space which is why I agreed to sign up and test it out, but Arc isn’t really innovating.
I had dismissed this as yet another tab management browser widget thingy, but I took a closer look at it. To me, what is really standout, is what they have done with "spaces." They are basically profiles, which is something no browser currently does well. Ultimately it comes down to being a cookie manager to an extent. I love the idea that I can have different accounts for various projects, and when I switch between…
Sidebery for Firefox is integrated with profiles pretty well. In general, the article seems to be an overly excited marketing pitch for yet another closed source Chromium-based browser, the main feature of which seems to be a... vertical tab bar? Which seems to be mimicking Sidebery to a close degree? Underwhelming.
Sorry, but no. This is from someone whose main browser is Firefox with Sidebery.
Sidebery can be configured to have a relatively low integration with containers - not profiles. You could argue that containers are very similar to profiles, and in a sense they are - but there's no deeply integrated UI/UX between Sidebery and containers.
The spacial isolation Arc does by tying a space to a profile is much stronger and IMO much easier to grok than anything with Firefox and containers.
I've been using Arc on my personal machine for a couple months now, and my favorite feature is one that surprised me: Tab persistence is opt-in Meaning that, unless you explicitly pin a tab, or stick it in a folder you create, it will get automatically closed after some period of time (in practice for me this meant between browsing sessions). Initially this surprised and annoyed me, but over time it prodded me to be…
I usually do Reddit/HN binges where Ill open up 30+ tabs that are of interest and make my way through the list but if I don't get to them in under 10 minutes, the tabs automatically close and I'll forget them while still getting the dopamine hit of clicking on all the novel headlines :)
# Kagi Orion I encourage HN readers on MacOS to consider Kagi's excellent Orion browser: https://browser.kagi.com/ It has sidebar tab contexts (as hierarchical tab sessions), and several other of the features this author is excited about. # Safari Ventura / iOS 16 For that matter, so does Safari on Ventura and iOS 16. I also encourage new-to-Mac users to try using Safari's sidebar mode coupled with saved and sync'd t…
My hope for Safari in iOS 17 / macOS 14 is allowing tab groups to be sandboxed (similar to profiles in Arc, or containers in Firefox).
I've tried Arc and have since reverted back to Firefox. It has a bunch of features I like, but one huge drawback that kind of kills it for me. Arc gives you persistent tabs across all open windows, and you wind up with (whether you want to or not) numerous open windows. That means I have to sift through 5+ open windows of identical tabs just to find the one window with the tab containing the Reddit comment I was in t…
But they haven't smoothed out the UX with multiple windows, which has all the annoyances that you point out. I think they need to figure out how to nudge users towards going to a different space instead of a new window, or automatically launch each new window with a new space.
Arc is pretty unique in that is does away with bookmarks and instead sorts your tabs into three "tiers" - Favorites, pretty much like pinned tabs in every other browser, but these feel more durable, accidentally navigating away is not a thing and Arc doesn't really open multiple windows. - Pinned, which are bookmarks and tabs at the same time. - Today, which are ephemeral tabs that are automatically purged after 12 h…
(0) Favorites, which can have icons turned off and be text menus with nesting across your browser bar horizontally,
(1) Tab Groups, which persist and live in the side bar vertically with lists under each, and
(2) ephemeral tabs (transient, today, etc.) that live above the tab groups, and can disappear when you quit/rerun browser or be restored (I use that mode). And, just for fun, it also has
(3) "Pinned Tabs" that stay pinned at the left of your tab row. Both (1) Tab Groups and (2) ephemeral tabs have their own unique (3) Pinned tabs.
Certainly favorites are bookmarks while tab groups are tabs, but there's little difference in practical use as you can right click a favorites hierarchy and "open in tab group".
The ephemeral class are unique per Apple device, while the Tab Groups are shared across devices. Both are synced across devices, you can browse to the ephemeral class on other Apple devices using the "iCloud Tabs" button at bottom of sidebar.
I've been using Arc on my personal machine for a couple months now, and my favorite feature is one that surprised me: Tab persistence is opt-in Meaning that, unless you explicitly pin a tab, or stick it in a folder you create, it will get automatically closed after some period of time (in practice for me this meant between browsing sessions). Initially this surprised and annoyed me, but over time it prodded me to be…
It's been interesting seeing tab persistence slowly become the default in recent years. I've never quite understood it. Maybe it's just my way of coping with some sort of mild undiagnosed ADD, but if I open my browser for one thing and something else pops up I tend to forget what the first thing was so I've always set my browser up to open a single tab to about:blank (or at least some sort of blank page. It's gotten…
But I never seem to use tab groups as much as I am theoretically excited to :/