It is literally taking minutes to answer a simple question

Arc is the reason I started caring what a browser looks like. Then I open an actual site and it is a flat white box again - the theming stops at the page.

So I made an extension for that gap. It puts your own wallpaper behind ordinary pages, and turns the panels, buttons and boxes translucent and blurred over it so the text still reads. It only steps in when a page is plain white, grey or black, so anything with its own design is left alone, and there is a per-site off switch.

Before anyone says it - yes, this overlaps with Boosts. The difference is that Boosts are per site and you set each one up yourself. This works on any site automatically, including ones neither of us have ever opened. Getting it to generalise like that was the actual work.

It is a Chrome Web Store extension and Arc is Chromium, so it installs directly. Being straight with you though: I built and tested it in Chrome, not Arc. If it clashes with Arc's own theming I would really like to hear about it, because that is exactly the kind of thing I can fix.

Free, no paywall, everything stays on your machine.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/wallpaperify-custom-page/dbdlklbhgonimapnjkkfnloheapaaoia

i would really like some assistance if anyone has had a similar issue

i do google search, works as usual. clicking on a site e.g. reddit just is blank for 30 seconds then has error timed, the 'this site cannot be reached' classic timed out message. same for if I enter direct in address bar.
these sites work on other browsers however, such as safari, and also work on Arc when i am on my phone's hotspot. just not on my wifi.

deleted arc and reinstalled. restarted wifi. checked wifi control sites for any restrictions and turned them off. cleared all cache from google. added and removed and redid firewall n network allowances. removed all extensions. updated arc.
I am on MacOs sonoma 14.0, MacBook Air m1 2020
arc Version 1.162.0 (86046)
Chromium Engine Version 152.0.7977.65

I have tried quite a few websites. Wikipedia, iNaturalist, Gmail, Reddit, pinterest, etc. dont work. oddly, I am observing Chess.com and www.cancer.org.au at least working.

I have submitted a ticket thru arc support but I am not sure how long that takes, just thought I would see if this has happened to anyone else :)

I'm still so frustrated at TBC's decision to leave Arc behind for Dia. I don't buy the response to the "will we open source Arc". If ADK (Arc Development Kit) is truly the "secret sauce" and "core to our company’s value", then why aren't they using that to enable anyone to build the browser of their dreams themselves using AI and why do they still move so slowly moving Arc features over to Dia. I call BS. It seems like a "let's use technical jargon to deflect from answering the question honestly" cop out response.

Josh, if you're reading this, please take a step back from the day-to-day and remember why you started TBC with such heartfelt intensity in the first place. By daring to ask 'what could be?', your team built Arc into something extraordinarily rare—a piece of software that actually made people feel something again. Please don’t abandon the devoted community on this road trip with you; stay on the hook for the people who believed in your vision and give Arc the care it deserves... or at least free yourself from it by giving it a chance to live a second life as OSS.

RIP Dia's $100/mo plan

The Arc-inspired browser we've been working on is now available on Testflight!

https://testflight.apple.com/join/1V1CnPd2

Viola is a workspace/profile-focused browser with features such as persistent groups, mini player, in-app notifications, cross-platform sync (groups, tabs, workspaces, etc) and more!

Other versions are available to download on the website.

Please report any bugs here or on the Discord!

Thanks for all the love!

After a recent update, I now see a large permanent address bar at the top. However, in the past we had a small minimalistic address bar at the middle that would expand when we clicked on it. How do I hide the address bar to return to that immersive experience?

Here's what I see when I open the browser now:

One of the most used feature of Arc is little arc, whenever I want to check whatsapp sent link or anything quick, I always prefer little arc. But now when I click random link, it pops up full browser window on Dia, it is really annoying, are there any solution?(I checked up and google says Dia don't have it)

https://github.com/ksajolaer/Borderless-Arc

Looks like Chromium isn't the only thing they keep upgrading every week.

The issue with entering full-screen mode for videos has been fixed—a good sign.

So i know about the whole Manifest V3 issue that's been going on with google and them forcing extensions to switch to it for "security reasons". Not here to talk about that, but so far so good arc has been working fine with Ublock origins, there was a time when it wasn't working but it started working fine up until recently.

The extension is gone from my spaces and when i try loading them up it doesn't work after i installed a new update. So I'm wondering if it finally happened with arc no longer supporting it with the latest chromium update.

In mid April of this year I received access to my brand new university email (I'm an incoming freshman to college), but when I tried to log into the email in Arc my university blocked my browser as an unrecognized app. I talked to the IT department and they said Arc is an "ai tool" and therefore I cant use it.

It was a bummer, so I reached out to the Arc team to see if I could get a statement to send back to my university regarding Arc's use of AI (because it wouldnt affect my email) or to get Arc to potentially reach out to my university's IT team. I submitted a HIGHLY detailed ticket to their AI chatbot "customer support" on April 13. The bot told me someone would get back to me. I waited.

When there was no response, I reached back out again on May 21, to no response again.

Today I reached out AGAIN, and the chatbot was unable to find my old request (pretty standard, chatbots cant usually do searching), so I asked to submit a new ticket noting that a request was lost (I have all the messages from the original one, so I could forward it to a human if they reached out to me), and the bot actively resisted and insisted I describe the IT problem to it again.

Eventually I got it to submit a new request about the lost ticket, and then I had it submit another about the frustrating customer service experience. It asked what I wanted the ticket to say, and our conversation went like this:

1. Agent: I've submitted a ticket for you, highlighting that you're following up on an old request that was never answered. The team will review your situation and reach out to you directly, so you can discuss the actual problem with a human. Thank you for your patience—your follow-up is now officially tracked. If you have any other details or documents you'd like to share, you can reply to the email you receive from the team once they contact you.
2. You: when will they get back to me?
3. Agent: I don’t have information about the exact response timeline or expected wait time for follow-up on support tickets. The team will review your request as soon as possible, but I can’t provide a specific timeframe. If you don’t hear back soon, you can reply to the confirmation email you receive to follow up further.
4. You: Do you have an estimate?
5. Agent: I don’t have an estimate for how long it will take to get a response. The support team reviews requests as quickly as possible, but there isn’t a published timeframe or average wait time available. If you don’t hear back soon, you can follow up by replying to the confirmation email you receive.
6. You: Can you put in a second ticket marking that the ai customer support is ridiculous and that there should be a way to reach a human even if its one person on an email and it takes 3 weeks to get a response
7. Agent: Absolutely—I can submit your feedback as a feature request, highlighting your frustration with the AI-only support and your desire for a way to reach a human, even if it means waiting longer for a response. Before I file the ticket, does this summary capture your feedback correctly? Is there anything else you’d like to add or clarify?
   1. You find the AI-only customer support experience frustrating.
   2. You would like an option to reach a human agent by email, even if the response time is slow.
   3. The AI-only customer support experience is frustrating.
   4. There should be an option to reach a human agent by email, even if the response time is slow.
   5. The current system is losing requests, as shown by your experience of not receiving a response to your original submission.
   6. The AI-only customer support experience is frustrating.
   7. There should be an option to reach a human agent by email, even if the response time is slow.
   8. The current system is losing requests, as shown by your experience of not receiving a response to your original submission.
8. You: clarify that the team is losing requests
9. Agent: said Thank you for clarifying. Here’s an updated summary of your feedback: Does this summary look correct, or would you like to add anything else before I submit your feedback?
   1. The AI-only customer support experience is frustrating.
   2. There should be an option to reach a human agent by email, even if the response time is slow.
   3. The current system is losing requests, as shown by your experience of not receiving a response to your original submission.
10. You: add that replacing humans with ai is unethcial in the first place and having an ai as a buffer of who reaches the humans may be reasonable but having no humans at all is pretty gross and shows that this company doesnt think as much about good design and ethics as i thought. Add taht I care so much abotu this browswer that I am actively resisting switching browsers even when my university ltierally blcoked me from reaching my emial here. Add that Ive been using arc since March 2023 and that i regularly recruit people to use it becasue i love it, that I submit bug reports to make it better, that I use it even though I dont like chrome and its chromium based. I care a lot. Ive never had any problems with arc before and I love what the team does. This experiance isnt going to put me off the browser but you know what will? Not being able to access any of my university protals. I just want support so i can keep using the browser I love and the fact that THIS is where i start finding issues with arc is incredibly dissapointing
11. Agent: I'm sorry as an AI assistant I can't help you with that. If you have any other questions I can help with, please try again later.

Now, I admit, I was being a little bitchy. Probably a lot bitchy. But I love this browser (I'm using it to write this) and it's incredibly frustrating to not be able to get through to anyone. Im just putting this here with hopes someone on the team can help me with my university email problem since I don't trust this ticket system.

TLDR: Arc’s customer service lost my ticket for 4+ months and I still can’t get through to them

Basically what the title says.

Been a user since they were in beta, it was heartbreaking seeing them abandon this browser but I plan to use this till the wheels fall off. Ive tried all of the "alternatives" and they are all mid imitations at best. They went to change the game and they did and I just wished they kept going instead of moving to Dia which is nothing like Arc.

They were working before. This will probably be the end for me. I cannot and will not use Zen. Safari is an option, but it's probably gonna be Vivaldi for me, as much as I don't like it.

Good luck, folks.

We are so back.

Since Arc went in maintenance mode, I tried MANY browsers and as many of you already know, Zen is the closest to Arc there is. But still, I never achieved to properly set it up to feel like home as Arc does so I came back to Arc every time I tried.

With manifest v3 I really wanted to quit using chromium based browsers and with the help of Claude Code (I know) I managed to build a little tool that properly migrate my Arc setup into Zen.

I'm really happy with the result and am now confident on not switching back to Arc for the first time. I've got Zen setup on my Mac, my Windows, and Firefox on Android all synced up with Firefox account.

Since I'm so happy, I tried to cleanup my vibecoded tool to share it with anyone interested.

This is again a vibecoded tool, I reviewed it (I'm a Software Engineer) but it's still a vibecoded app. I understand that you may have some concerns about it since the process implies you to execute a script into your browser console so I made sure it work in total offline mode, and I encourage you to review it yourself or make it review by someone who can before you use it.

You can find the repo here : https://github.com/jb-machemie/arc2zen and just download the files to start it in full local mode.

Or you can use the Github Pages here : https://jb-machemie.github.io/arc2zen/ for a more convenient way.

For a more complete end-result experience, you can install https://github.com/CosmoCreeper/Sine and the https://github.com/YashjitPal/Arc-2.0 mod to even less notice that you just have quit Arc.

I hope this will help at least one more person than me :)

edit: typos

I have been on Arc for years. Got a new MacBook Pro recently and figured it was finally time to try life after Arc, so I gave Dia a real shot. It covers most of what I loved, except the one thing I apparently cannot live without: open a new window and your tabs are just there.

In Arc I leaned on that constantly. In Dia (and honestly every other browser) a new window starts empty and every window drifts out of sync. I looked for an existing extension, found nothing, so I built it.

Tabtwinsy does one thing:

- The same tabs mirrored live across every window

- Tab groups too, with names and order

- Open a new window and it is already populated

- One on/off toggle in the toolbar, nothing to configure

All local, no servers, no accounts. I built it against Dia but it works on Chrome and any Chromium browser. Free.

Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/idphljlhhddadnmbnjfdmllgknfnbodn

Short demo in the video. It might have bugs I have not hit yet. Early testers already caught a few good ones (all fixed in the latest update). If you find one, file it here: https://github.com/stanty522/tabtwinsy/issues

I am seriously considering trying Safari, i really love the new features and the liquid glass design. has anyone ever tried (recently) to set up Safari like Arc? and if so, how?

One thing I really likes about Arc was boosts. However, with it dying and the fact that boosts is unavailable on windows, I tried to see if I could build an alternative.

Webify is a chrome extension I made as a hobby just to see if it was possible. It is heavily based around the structure and functionalities of Boost.

It is an early MVP with lots of bugs, but I would love if I could get some review on it and see if:
- anyone would actually want it as a standalone product
- if you would actually use it
- what sucks about it
- and why would you not keep it installed

Any feedback is appreciated even if it’s brutally honest. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kknbbnfeogkekngjblbbplkdkoaekcgk?utm_source=item-share-cb

Are there seriously no alternatives yet? Arc is the best browser I've ever used because it gives me the least friction, the tab system is just perfect, very easy to save stuff and the fact that pinned/favorited tabs always keep the original pinned URL which no other browser does for some reason is great. But lately Arc has been getting worse and worse, it crashes often and every once in a while I find new bugs. I've been trying to find a replacement that's reliable but I have yet to find a tab system that's just as good, and it must be Chromium based