Eight months ago, my browser tab hoarding was out of control. I was juggling websites for work, a heap of Twitter links, travel blogs for an upcoming vacation, and "92 One-Pot Meals You'll Keep Coming Back To." Finding an open tab was like playing hide and seek in the cluttered abyss of Chrome, each link harder to find than the last.
Then came Arc, a new web browser recommended by Jason Spinell, manager of Slack's early-stage investment fund. Its developer The Browser Company, Spinell told me, "is building a browser, but they are truly rethinking the foundation of computing." I was skeptical, expecting it would join the forgotten graveyard of apps that failed to live up to their initial hype. After eight months of using Arc as my default browser, I'm praying it survives the hype.
Arc sheds the browser interface as we know it. It ditches the row of tabs at the top of a browser window for a convenient sidebar, where you can pin favorite links and scroll through open tabs. The browser also benefits from an automatic cleaning service. Every 12 hours, it closes all open tabs, limiting clutter and headaches. If tidying guru Marie Kondo had a favorite web browser, it would be Arc.
In July, Arc dropped the waitlist and became available for anyone to download. It's still Mac and iOS only, for now.
And although Arc may be the first browser to ever "spark joy," it's only recently left beta and isn't perfect. Here are the things I love and don't love about Arc version 1.0.