Arc browser is winding down: what to switch to and what we lose

The Browser Company signalled in mid-2025 that Arc is moving to maintenance mode. The team’s focus has shifted to Dia, their new AI-first browser. Arc isn’t dead, but the active development that defined it through 2022–2024 has clearly slowed.

This piece is from using Arc as a primary browser for over a year and processing the news.

What actually happened

The Browser Company didn’t announce “Arc is dead.” They announced that the team’s next investment is Dia, and Arc is being maintained but not heavily extended. The distinction matters for engineering teams who run Arc today.

What this means practically:

• Arc continues to work. Security updates, bug fixes, occasional small features.
• No major new capabilities are coming. The Spaces / Profiles / Boost features that defined Arc 1.0 are the feature set we keep.
• The community will gradually shrink as users migrate to whatever comes next.

Why this happened

Reading the company’s public communications and the industry signal:

• Arc grew slower than the company hoped despite enthusiastic users
• AI-first browsers (Dia, Atlas, Comet) are eating the attention space Arc was trying to occupy
• The Browser Company is a startup; they have to bet on growth, and Arc’s growth ceiling didn’t match the investment

The honest read: Arc was beloved by power users and didn’t cross the chasm to mainstream adoption. The team chose to start over with an AI-first product rather than slowly retrofit AI into Arc.

What to migrate to

Depending on what you valued in Arc:

You loved Spaces / vertical tabs: try Zen Browser (Firefox fork, MIT-licensed, vertical tabs, Spaces-like organisation). It’s genuinely good and actively developed.

You valued the Pinned / Today / Archive separation: harder to replicate. Zen has its own version. Some Chrome extensions (TabsX, Workona) provide partial parity.

You wanted AI-first browsing: try Dia (when available) or Atlas or Comet. These are all early but actively iterated.

You just want a browser that mostly stays out of your way: Vivaldi, Brave, or just plain Chrome with carefully chosen extensions.

What we actually lose

A few things Arc did that nobody quite replicates:

The Spaces concept — explicit context separation (work / personal / project-specific) was implemented better in Arc than anywhere else.

Boosts — per-site CSS / JS customisation. Niche but extremely useful when you used it.

The polished native macOS feel — Arc’s rendering, animations, and integration with macOS was best-in-class.

These features will live on in clones and forks, but the integrated experience is what made Arc Arc, and that’s harder to clone.

What the community is saying

The r/ArcBrowser and r/browsers signal in mid-2025:

• A wave of “where do I migrate?” threads in the weeks following the announcement
• General sadness — Arc had genuine fan-evangelism that few products achieve
• Mixed reception to Dia: some excited about the AI-first take, others skeptical that it’ll grow to where Arc already is

The pattern: heavy Arc users are migrating reluctantly. New browser-curious users are trying Zen, Vivaldi, or sticking with Chrome.

The recommendation

If you’re currently on Arc and happy: stay. The browser still works, security updates still ship, no urgent reason to migrate.

If you’re considering switching to Arc in mid-2025: don’t. Pick a forward-looking option (Zen, Dia, or Vivaldi).

If you’re looking at AI-first browsers: it’s early. Comet, Atlas, Dia are all interesting but unproven. Give the space 6-12 months to settle before committing.

For broader productivity tooling that pairs with browser choice, see our Raycast Pro review.

A note on browser company sunsets

This is the third browser company to walk back a beloved-but-niche product in five years (Opera Neon, Vivaldi mobile pivots, now Arc). The pattern is structural: building a browser is expensive, the market is concentrated, and “delight users, don’t scale” is not a sustainable position for a venture-funded company.

The implication: as users, we should hedge against this. Avoid browser-specific lock-in. Keep bookmarks, history, and extensions portable. Treat any non-Chrome browser as a “use until something changes” pick, not a long-term home.

It’s sad. It’s also the reality of the browser market in 2025.