Arc Browser Is Shutting Down, and The Verge's Editor Is Hunting for a Replacement

The Browser Company, the developer of the Arc web browser, will end the app by Christmas, after which it will no longer work. The news appears in Installer, the weekly recommendations column from tech outlet The Verge, written by editor David Pierce. He says the move was expected, and many Arc users must now find another browser.

Why Arc is going away

Two years ago the company dropped Arc in favor of Dia, a browser with a stronger focus on artificial intelligence. Arc has been in maintenance mode since then, and now it is being shut down entirely.

The alternatives under consideration

Pierce lists the browsers he intends to test:

• Dia — it has recently gained many of Arc's best features, and its AI tools can be switched off easily.
• Zen — an Arc-like browser built on Mozilla's Gecko engine rather than Chromium. He recalls it being buggy when he last tried it.
• Orion — the browser from search engine Kagi, which he has heard described as simple and light on resources.
• Vivaldi — highly customizable, but he found it fiddly.
• Helium — a minimalist browser with no frills.
• Firefox — he likes its recent design and feature choices, as well as forks such as Waterfox and Floorp.
• Brave — he has found it too heavy in the past, but it often wins privacy comparisons.

On mobile, his favorite iOS browser is Quiche. Arc was never great on Android, so he expects most users never switched there. Pierce has not yet made a final choice and says he will report back periodically.

The same edition also mentions other items, including the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Anthropic's Claude Duet assistant, which is currently waitlist-only, and Amazon's $80 Blink Mini 4K camera.