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 browser by Google.
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, owning over 60% of the browser marketshare—so chances are, you're reading this site in Google Chrome right now.
Love it or hate it, you should appreciate it. Without Chrome, the Chromium engine wouldn't exist—why does that matter? Well the open-source browser foundation that was built by Google is likely powering whatever browser you're using right now.
All-in-all, Chrome is great. It was our main browser for over a decade. And yes, we tried all of leading browsers on the market (Safari, Brave, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi—even giving Edge fair shot when they introduced OpenAI into the mix).
We continued going back to Chrome—it was just familiar and worked well, especially if your personal and work life are tied to Google (as many are).
Well... That was up until Arc (by The Browser Company).
If someone is solely looking for the most stable internet browser on the market.
If you're using Windows, Linux, or an operating system outside of MacOS.
If you're using MacOS, then there's actually some exceptional alternatives on the market. Now, that doesn't mean that Google Chrome isn't for you if this is the case, but what we are saying is that you have options, and should consider trying the browsers listed on our best browser software & tools list.
Chrome has all of the normal features that browsers have, so we'll cover some of the more standout features (which isn't all that unique as most other browsers also have what Chrome has, and even more).
Of all the Chrome features, this was one of all the key features that we were most excited about. If you're using Chrome, you've probably experienced first-hand tab overload. And heck, you've probably even experimented with alternative tab management browser tools like Workona or Toby.
Tab management is where Chrome has always struggled, and tab groups were set out to solve this issue:
Rather than describe all of the features you're probably already familiar with like tabs and bookmarks, I think it's time better spent explaining why you shouldn't really expect new features with Chrome.
When you have a product that has billions of users and hundreds of millions of companies relying on it, you need to focus on stability over everything else.
Is that why it took the Chrome team over a year of beta testing "Tab Groups" before publicly releasing it? Oh, and then only leaving it core to the new tab experience for a few months before ultimately disabling it and making it a manual opt-in feature.
Yeah, that's because of inertia. Billions of people are expecting the browser to work one way, you can't have core functionality change one day without pissing off potentially hundreds of millions of people.
Okay, okay, so all of that is totally fair... But also sorta a boring answer 😅 okay, you win—let's ruffle some feathers!
Ah good-ol bookmarks! Tried, true, and tested. Do they actually work well for referencing back what you saved? Nope! But they are familiar, so don't touch them!
Wait... You said they don't work well—let's dive into that for a moment. Hear me out—bookmarks weren't actually created to make finding pages you're looking for to be easier.
The more you use bookmarks, the less you search Google to find what you are looking for, and the less ads that Google can serve you. Ah! Misaligned incentives! Get overwhelmed with all your open tabs? Google wants this! It results in you closing the overwhelm of tabs, only to later search Google to find back what you're looking for.
What if bookmarks and tab management could be rethought and reinvented 🤔 well they can be, that's why much of Chrome's team have left Google to join Arc Browser to actually build out all the ideas that they had at Google but were killed because releasing them would actually hurt Google's Ad business. 🤯
The best part about Chrome for mobile is that it works cross-platform, from iOS to Android, and everything in-between. That said, it's quite standard with what you'd expect (for better or worse).
Things counting against it though are that they don't have the address bar at the bottom of the screen (which makes it far more reachable on mobile). Even Apple put the address bar at the bottom of the screen with Safari on iOS because it just makes sense.
This is where we feel the mobile app is lacking. It just hasn't changed much, just like the desktop app. But that's also what people love about it, so I suppose that's what you get with Chrome. At least they're consistent with who they are and what they're trying to accomplish.
Before Arc, I've have just told you that the major competitors on the market were pretty much the same thing, with slight opinionation. Take Brave, the privacy-focused opinionation. Looks and feels almost identical to Chrome, but you don't need to sign up with an email address to use it (you instead have a hash key).
If you're on MacOS, give Arc Browser a shot—it's essentially what Chrome could have been if they didn't rely on an ad business (although it's coming soon to Windows as well). It genuinely rethinks from the ground up of what a browser is, and could be. They bake in delight into every interaction, and it just does more.
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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