Whereas other browsers now mainly exist to track you around the internet (in order to better target ads), we built Arc with you in mind – to save you as much time as possible when you use the internet every day. To bring order to the chaos of your online life, stuck between rows and rows of tabs. We do that within a gorgeous interface that respects your privacy and was built with care.
In other words, Arc is to your ex-browser what the iPhone was to cellphones. Or as one of our members said “like moving from a PC to a Mac.” It’s from the future – and just feels great.
Features
Space for the different sides of you
Effortlessly organize everything you do online – work, study, hobbies – all in one window with Spaces and Profiles.
Your browser, your way
Find your perfect setup with Split View, Themes, and more.
The comfort of privacy
Arc is built from the ground up to be private and secure. We don’t know what sites you visit or what you search for.
Keeping Arc Secure
Your browser is a portal to the whole internet, and everything in it. So ensuring your browser is airtight, and secure as it can possibly be, is of incredible importance to us.
We’re a small (but mighty) team working to ensure you never have to worry that your data is being misused, misappropriated, or sold in ways you’re not aware of.
Browser Engine
Building a browser from the ground up is really hard, which is why Arc is built on Chromium – the same engine that powers Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. So, Arc benefits from the same foundation that makes those browsers reliable and secure. But since Chromium is open source, we can augment it to further protect your privacy.
As for security, Chromium is constantly updated with security fixes for new vulnerabilities, and we take staying up to date with the newest version of Chromium very seriously. We even have a dedicated team of lovely Chromium engineers! Our upgrade process guarantees that Arc is always using the latest version of Chromium within 48 hours of a new version or hotfix being released.
Infrastructure
Arc uses GCP Firebase for user authentication, storage for Notes & Easels, and Cloud Functions for certain application features like referral code generation. All data stored in Firebase is encrypted-at-rest by default.
Direct access to any production data is limited to a few select teams based on their roles. Access is logged and reviewed at regular intervals. We store as little PII as possible and routinely audit our data to ensure we’re not storing anything sensitive. Please see the privacy policy for a list of what user data is stored.
Logging & Analytics
Over the course of using the Browser, we collect certain telemetry data related to internal actions that the Browser is taking and actions that cause the Browser to crash. We collect this information to improve the Browser and understand categories of issues that members are experiencing.
Our philosophy for analytics is that they should be helpful in improving the product while simultaneously protecting member privacy.
Is Arc based on Chromium?
Yes, which means it supports all of the Chrome Extensions and websites that are essential to your internet workflows. That said, we’ve stripped away all of the unfortunate parts that Google has in there to support their ad business – we actually share a list of all the features we’ve disabled here. In other words, Arc is Chromium without the junk, which makes it faster too!
Excitingly, we built Arc in a way that makes it easy to swap rendering engines in the future. This means we may offer a WebKit version one day, or even build a rendering engine of our own. Time will tell!
The point is: Arc is Chromium-based in order to make it effortless to adopt and use with the applications and extensions that you rely on every day. But it doesn’t violate your privacy like other Chromium-based browsers.
Does Arc support Chrome Extensions?
Yes, Arc supports 100% of the Extensions that Chrome supports. In fact, you can fully import all of your data from Chrome to Arc in less than 5 seconds when you download it.
Does Arc come with a built in ad-blocker?
Arc comes with uBlock Origin already installed but the user has full control of their browser and can uninstall it if that’s preferred. We currently don’t have a custom built ad-blocking but are looking at building further member protections into Arc in the future. Since we’re using Chromium under the hood, any ad-blockers or privacy tooling that is available in the Chrome app store works with Arc.
What’s New
Windows version updated to 1.0.0:
- Arc on Windows is finally here.
macOS version updated to 1.21.0:
- You can now opt in to show the Full URL in Toolbar. Start by turning on Toolbar in View > Show Toolbar. Then right-click on Toolbar to “Show Full URL”.
- We’ve also made improvements to the Toolbar layout generally to support the new Full URLs and improvements to display in Split View.
- Window resizing is now a whole lot smoother.
- We’ve improved how the Toolbar applies page color when quickly turning it on and off.
- We’ve added a persistent Capture button to your Easels in the Sidebar to allow you to quickly collect anything you find across the internet.
- Hitting ESC will now exit Peek for Easels.
- You can now quickly make pretty screenshots of tabs in Portrait Mode. Click the screenshot button in the toolbar (when in Developer Mode) or use CMD T… “Capture in Portrait Mode” to try it out.
- Entering Developer Mode now automatically installs the JSON Formatter extension for an easier reading experience.
- We’ve made a bunch of small but mighty pixel tweaks to tab spacing.
- Downloads in Little Arc now have rename prompts when Arc Max Tidy Downloads is turned on.
- Moving tabs from one Space to another no longer triggers the rename input field.
- We found and fixed more cases where custom space-switching shortcuts would be reset.
- Performance update: we’ve improved the speed of loading tab favicons in the Command Bar.
- We’ve fixed an issue that prevented extension windows from displaying correctly in Incognito windows.
