You may have been wondering why am I saying this right now. You may already knew that I was promoting Arc for quite sometimes, even wrote up an article about it. I have been using Arc on Windows since beta because one of my friends gave me a referral to be able to get into the program. It was in the end of January 2024, I got the access from a friend.

At first, I felt good and optimistic about it. But still, I use it beside Edge, my previous my main browser at that time. Yeah, I know at that stage, there’s still a lot of things need to be improved. Some features that supposed to be on a normal browser was not present yet. The workflow is different, so I need some time to be familiar with it.

At its core, it’s just another Chromium fork with its own skin, if you want to look at it that way. It’s true, since the Settings page is just nothing different than the vanilla one. But since that’s the truth, I could just use any Chrome extensions I usually use day to day on Edge and Chrome. I mean, every single “new” browsers these days are just Chromium inside.

Let’s talk about what I feel towards Arc Browser last year. I could say that I’m not satisfied with the current setup at that time. Arc felt so sluggish and RAM hogging at all time. My 8 GB of RAM can’t leave it just idling on the background, even if it’s just a new blank tab. The performance issue is real, I can’t even just ignore it. It doesn’t even make sense for a productivity-focused browser to be so slow so I can’t use it leisurely.

A friend of mine around that time recommends me Zen Browser. It was build over Firefox and designed like Arc Browser UI in mind. With it’s vertical tabs and split tabs feature, I could say this is the Firefox version of the Arc Browser. Some says that Firefox hogs RAM more than Chrome, which is true at certain scenario. But does it performs better all the time than Arc Browser? Absolutely.

I’m not going to telling the details on how I migrate from Arc to Zen (do you noticed it? A to Z?), but turns out my migration done well and I felt more joyful on using Firefox-based app, including Thunderbird which I have been using for two years and Zotero for my reference collection. Both on Windows and Linux, I can use Zen. Even though I have to leave some Chrome extensions I use the most, turns out I could live without it and use better replacement.

And then with Josh Miller, the CEO of The Browser Company said that they are now also want to build a new app, it’s called Dia. From his narration around the late 2024, I wasn’t unable to get the idea what would Dia look like and how it’s gonna work. Besides it’s going to be like Arc as Mac-first app, I also can’t just signing up as a student to try it out.

Yeah, I heard about it’s being a browser that will use AI here and there. Pretty much like what Arc already did before with Arc Max. But honestly, I don’t really use Arc Max that baked into it’s search on page feature most of the time when I’m still using it. I still more comfortable to use some AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini on their own app or website. Even to this day, I still do that. Especially if the chatbot I use are like Duck.ai by DuckDuckGo or Lumo which was recently released by Proton. Both are only available as a website.

And two months ago, they said that they want to focus more on Dia and leave Arc as it is. Sounds good? Maybe. That’s why I just want to gave up with Arc Browser. They still going to give updates to the browser, but only for the security updates, no feature updates at all. They also not going to make the browser open source due to its core part, the Arc Development Kit is their own, still a part of Dia too and they can’t give it to anyone.

As far as I can tell, everything Josh wrote on that blog post is reasonable. They are just a startup, not a big company that can do more things at once. I’m not trying to backing them up, but it’s just seems like a truth. But yeah, Arc Browser will not going anywhere. Like, literally. It will stays there, but no more quirky updates that we were waiting for each week via the newsletter over the emails. No more excitement anymore.

Because I think what’s makes Arc is Arc is that Arc want to be more standout by its design and feature with its own workflow. I admit, I would like to thank Arc for giving vertical tabs as the only option because that’s how I am using browser now, on Zen and Firefox. But since it will going to stand still now, I will just become a browser that hogs your RAM every time you are using it. Which is boring.