If maximizing your laptop battery life is your sole criteria for a browser, then that's the one area that Safari excels.
Ironically enough, Arc was actually built natively in Apple's Swift language (unlike Safari), so if you're interested in seeing what a modern browser could look like as if Apple made it, Arc is exactly that.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
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The future of the internet masked as a browser, built for productive teams.
Arc is a web browser. In simple terms, it's a replacement to Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, but oh, also so much more... A big part of what makes Arc great is actually the fluidity and experience when using it. It feels more core to the operating system than any other browser on the market.
If you try it out, you'll know what I mean.
Your browser has mainly just been in the background, right? You don't think that much about it, it's more just a tool to access the internet. Yeah, that's where Arc changes that—what if a browser could give you moments of micro-delight in the day-to-day usage? In fact, why don't other browsers?
If you're like most people and have just been using Chrome or Safari and not thinking much about your browser experience, Arc by The Browser Company is probably for you—let me explain...
There's no shortage of productivity-focused browsers out there like SigmaOS, Sidekick, Shift, amongst many others, and I'm willing to bet that if you're reading this, you probably haven't even checked them out or have heard of them. But you're here because you've heard of Arc. Great! That's because Arc is trying to just be a better browser, one that people don't even realize they need or want.
Whether you've tried a new browser in the past (e.g. Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera) or feel like switching is too much work. We're here to tell you that it's worth it to try out Arc. It's not like other web browsers on the market.
The best way to describe it is it's as if Apple re-thought web browsers from the ground up, and built it natively as if it was something more, like an internet browser, or rather an internet machine. What if your browser could actually feel as native and fluid as your operating system? Yeah, that's Arc browser. It was built for everyone, by people that really care. In a space that most people stopped "caring" about 6+ years ago.
Best of all, it's built with the Chromium engine as the backbone, so all your favorite browser extensions will work right out of the box!
If you're someone that uses the best productivity tools like Motion, Superhuman, or Notion then Arc is the perfect addition to your stack.
For starters, it's currently only available for MacOS, Windows (in Beta), and iOS, so if you're not using any of those operating systems, then Arc won't work for you.
I, for example, use Android (Chrome on mobile), and Arc Browser on desktop, and I'm totally fine with that—you don't need both together to benefit from Arc. But if you're someone that wants the exact same browser as their mobile app as well, Arc might not be for you.
At the end of the day, Arc is not just for the productivity-minded or the early adopters. It was built for everyone, whether you're a student, a stay-at-home parent, a CEO, or retired, there's something in Arc for you, that will make your day-to-day browsing experience just that much better.
Rating: A-
Arc's team have totally rethought the bookmarks and the "tab experience" with a powerful vertical tab bar (don't worry, it can be hidden if you prefer that), along with an incredibly powerful profile workspace feature called "Spaces".
Spaces allow you to stay focused and easily segment your work while easily organizing tabs are important to you in folders.
For example, set up a personal space, favorite your YouTube, Spotify, WhatsApp, and Gmail tabs—from there, they function like mini apps. Now, with the swipe of 2 fingers, you're in your work space. All of your favorite apps are swapped out with your work apps, and you're logged into all of your work accounts:
No other browser lets you segment work to this degree. It's so powerful, yet such a simple implementation. Tough to truly explain without experiencing it yourself.
What clicked for me, is when someone explained the following to me (when I was at the time an avid user of Chrome): With Chrome, Google is in the business of ads, so they are actually incentivized to give you a crummy tab management experience. Why? Because what happens if finding the tab you're looking for is difficult? You open up a new tab and search Google again (and you're shown more ads).
So it's more that the UI/UX in many ways by the industry leader is built in such a way to optimize for displaying ads. Arc on the other hand is building features that give you a better experience, first-and-foremost.
Are you like us and like to have your CRM open when you're going through your email inbox via Superhuman? Bookmark a split screen for that. Like to take notes in Notion while watching YouTube videos? Save a split screen for that too.
Imagine for a moment that a bookmark was more than just a bookmark—with Arc, it is. Is gives you powerful split view functionality to group together commonly used websites together, making it so that it's only a click away.
While it sounds like a cute name, it's quite the powerful feature. How many times have you wanted to quickly peek into a web page from Slack or other programs, only to be thrown into another tab in a sea of tabs within your main browser? Little Arc is where clicking on links from other programs starts, with the quick option to open it into the full browser experience. Might seem small, but it makes for a super enjoyable and light experience.
Every single person that uses a computer, uses a browser. It's probably the most competitive software market in the world, and Google pays Apple some $20bn per year just to have Google set as the default search engine in Apple products.
Because of that, this can't be covered in just a single section in a post. Here's a full write-up on how Arc compares to the top browsers on the market.
If you're curious as to Arc vs Chrome or Arc vs Brave, you can see our thoughts there.
Arc is currently available on MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. That said, if you're using Linux, ChromeOS, or something else, you'll probably be hard-pressed bo give this new browser a try because they haven't announced Linux and other OS focus/release.
Arc is officially on Windows and you can get it here. They even have a fun website where they answer the question: isarconwindowsyet.com (spoiler alert, it is and they've onboarded over 200K users already).
Arc Search is available now on both iOS and Android. Both Andra and myself use it as our default browser on mobile, though when using a tablet, Chrome does still give a better tablet experience (for now).
If you're intrigued, want to know more, and see more of the features/benefits in GIF format, go check out this article where we've done a deep dive on why we think Arc is the future of the internet.
Well, there's no more waiting list, so you can go ahead and give it a shot today if you're on MacOS, Windows, iOS, or Android, so we'd say yes, Arc is worth it.
The battery optimized browser built by Apple.
This is the default browser that comes with mac devices, and has existed for over a decade.
With Safari, you're not going to get anything too cutting-edge or innovative, because they, like Google Chrome are focused on stability for their 1+ billion users.
For a further breakdown in understanding the negatives that come with browsers that have hit major scale, refer to our Chrome vs Safari comparison.
Since Apple is a hardware company at the end of the day, the whole point of Safari is that you're going to get a great cohesive experience if you're using all Apple products (Mac + iPad + iPhone).
The largest benefit to be had here, in our eyes, comes from Apple owning both the hardware and software layers. This allows them to go above and beyond with optimizations like battery life and cross-device syncing.
While they have baked in password management
We don't really see much major innovation or differentiation coming to Safari though. Why? Because this isn't Apple's core business. Not only that, but Apple has zero interest in going after the B2B and collaborative browser space. When comparing Arc Browser vs Safari, you'll see first-hand that Arc has a lot more going on in the features and differentiation space as they ultimately want to be the browser for teams and collaboration.
We do applaud Apple for adding tab groups, and allowing for them to be on the side of the browser window. There's some small similarities when comparing Safari vs Brave in the recently released sidebar tab management in Brave and Arc.
With Safari, you get a familiar and safe UI. It looks like a browser, it looks pretty much the same as it has the past decade, and it's relatively bland in terms of how it looks.
There's just not much to mention here, but the truth of the matter is some of this is by design. Their focus is to be stable, functional, and to let the content of the website you're currently on, shine.
This is where we can give Apple some props on the user-experience, if of course you're also using other Apple products. Take for example you visit a website on your iPhone, you get a prompt in your MacOS dock that shows a website was just opened on mobile. Want to open it up on your desktop? Simply click the Safari icon in your software dock.
In actually using the browser though, there's nothing in particular that stands out as an exceptional UX. This category in particular is where Arc shines. They have the smallest UX details, that just makes using the browser on the day-to-day so incredibly enjoyable.
Are you a huge Apple fan? Do you only care about getting the best possible battery performance on your MacBook and nothing else matters to you? Do you absolutely despise change? If so, Safari is probably fine for you.
If you're on the other hand sort of bored when looking at the existing browser market and wish you could get a bit more enjoyment and productivity out of your browser, then that's where you should definitely be giving Arc a shot.
Genuinely, give Arc a shot for a week straight as your daily driver, and I'm willing to bet you that you never come back to Safari again.
Arc Browser is genuinely what Apple could have made, had they re-thought the browser from the ground up, without all the baggage that currently exists with Safari. And for that reason, that's why we rank Arc at the top of our best browser apps list. Genuinely wouldn't be surprised if Apple one day acquired Arc and replaced it with Safari as the default browser for MacOS.
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