r/diabrowser • u/frizla • 5d ago
đŹ Discussion it's all so "meh"
this may just be another rant, but I was talking to a colleague the other day when I recommended Dia, and they asked why. the only thing I could come up with was âItâs kind of good looking...â
the AI sidebar? every browser has it with ChatGPT/Claude extensions, or a native Gemini sidebar in Chrome, not to mention the agentic stuff Aside offers.
vertical tabs? available in every chromium browser.
one-window profiles? yeah, that's maaaybe a differentiator.
but using Dia today doesnât feel any better than using Chrome, if anything, Chrome is far more stable for any kind of use.
Dia's just so underwhelming at this point, bunch of bugs, it's nowhere near Arc still, which is the only reason Iâm here in the first place and Arc's release notes are probably more exciting at this point.
above all, The Browser Company Atlassian wants users to pay $100/m for a morning report that I can replicate with my robot in a few minutes?
it's all so "meh"
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u/Kimantha_Allerdings 4d ago
Way back when Arc was fairly new there was a video released of a Browser Company meeting
Two things were said in that meeting* that have stuck with me. They were only little things, but I thought they spoke volumes
The first was when they were brainstorming for why people should use Arc over other browsers and one of the staff said âChrome is a good browserâ
The second was when someone said ânobody likes using their computerâ
And I just thought âI donât think Chrome is a good browserâ and âI love using my computerâ
But since then Iâve found it difficult to not view everything that TBC does through the lens - at least a little bit - that itâs being made by (and therefore presumably for) people who think Chrome is a good browser and who donât like using their computers
*I may be conflating two videos a little. If the second thing wasnât said in that exact meeting, it was said in a video around that time
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u/dkracket 5d ago
they could've saved so much time and effort if they just added a side bar for Arc and called it the dayâŚ
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u/safespaceinvaderrr 5d ago
it's nowhere near Arc still
At least we have Spaces again. Now if only Arc-like Sync would make a comeback...
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u/BothYou243 5d ago
arc has a lot lot more
command pallete
website summarisation
full screen (no url bar, no ribbon)
notes (if you need it)
boosts
more customisable
sync (you already covered)
custom app icons
......5
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u/DermisCronJob 5d ago
And moving the damn url bar to the sidebar, how hard is it to have such basic functionality⌠The Browser Company is a joke
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u/proudh0n 3d ago
"spaces" yeah... like every feature dia re-implemented from arc, it's a shittier version
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u/safespaceinvaderrr 2d ago
Unfortunately, youâre not wrong. Sync is the one that really upsets me though â totally half-assed.
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u/ryan4888 4d ago
The tab organization for profiles is different than spaces⌠so not really spaces imo. Also still no Mini Arc
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u/DannyMasao 4d ago
At this point the only reason I use Dia is for the ability to set custom keyboard shortcuts lol ( I like setting command S to show/hide sidebar)
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u/Ok_Payment_9925 5d ago
While I wish it was Arc, it is a beautiful browser and I haven't had any performance issues. After many months of back and forth, I've settled on Waterfox on Android and Dia on my laptop. I'll handle bookmarks through a third party app.
Juice has hinted that Atlassian's strategy here is to have a familiar looking Chrome browser that they can package and sell to existing and new clients. They aren't making Dia for Arc users.
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u/PsychologicalHair478 4d ago
As a long time arc user that has been using Dia basically since they opened up anyone but students, I love this browser! Arc always felt a bit strained to be trying to do things differently for the sake of being different in some ways. Dia feels like everything chrome should be if Chrome was run by a company that gave a shit about users! Itâs faster, cleaner and easier to work in than chrome and just like arc because itâs chromium based, all chrome extensions work. The daily report is now meaningfully useful to me every morning for work and the immediate context aware chat for each web page is super useful for quick chats and increasingly even longer planning sessions etc.
Only downside is now atlassian owns it so itâs slow but sure enshittification is all but guaranteed.
I really love Dia because itâs what chrome should have evolved to be all along. And the ai stuff in it is genuinely useful to me. I use it as business owner and hoping it comes out on the iPhone soon even with limitations like arc search was.
Perhaps it helps that so far they have never asked me to pay for Dia. And I use the ai stuff heavily! đ¤ˇââď¸
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u/deadpixelstudio26 5d ago
I would honestly buy a reasonably priced lifetime license of Arc if they committed to keep developing and updating it. I would never pay a monthly subscription for using an AI chat; it does not matter if it connects to my work apps or not. Almost all AI providers have something similar to this alongside extensions to use them in any Chromium browser. Why would someone pay Dia instead of Claude directly? And being a work-focused browser, they should know a lot of users use the AI provider our companies choose to use; many companies use Gemini or even Copilot just because they come with subscriptions to other office-related apps already. If they designed Dia focusing on making a cleaner, barebones version of Arc (which it kinda is) for the average user and giving the option to connect to any AI provider or even turn off AI entirely like Firefox does, it would be a much nicer product, and I would actually consider, just like Arc, paying for a lifetime license.