This post was first published on my personalblog.
I’ve used a lot of browsers in my life. As every ignorant teen ever, I started browsing using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. When I got older, I switched to Google Chrome on Windows. When I got a Mac, I used Safari. When I got into web development, I switched back to Chrome. Now, for a few months, I’m using Brave, due to the privacy benefits it offers. And I’m happy with Brave.
But then I heard of Arc. Arc is a new browser client, developed by The Browser Company of New York that has received quite the hype over the last few months. I signed up for their waitlist to get access, but since I’m a mere mortal I had to wait for a long time (2+ months). But yesterday, I got the email. Now we’re here. In this post, I wanted to share my initial thoughts on the the browsing experience of Arc after a few hours of usage.
First impressions matter
Starting up Arc was a whole experience in itself. I could tell they’ve put a lot of effort into the onboarding process. You’re greeted with a visually pleasing startup screen, and the onboarding allowed you to import your bookmarks from one or more browsers. And, let us not forget the product tour. It was a video of — I assume — an Arc employee, laying down the basics of how to use their product. The video player didn’t work. And usually it’s never a good sign when someone has to explain how their product works, since that often means that the UX is lacking. I was wrong about this.
I had to look up the “basics of using Arc” video on YouTube, and when I watched it, it clicked. Arc tries to change the way users interact with the web.
Arc’s aesthetics are nice, especially the fact that the location of the URL and your bookmarks bar, is moved from the traditional top to the screen, to the side in the form of a static sidebar. This sidebar has a horizontal scroll, enabling you to switch between your “spaces,” which is the name Arc gives to what you traditionally would use your bookmark folders for. Spaces also have their own colour theme. The sidebar works very refreshing, and feels like a new browsing experience.
Another thing I noticed is that Arc has a built-in search overlay reflecting the state of your URL. Apparently it’s called the command bar. This overlay is triggered by the shortcut you’d traditionally use for opening up a new tab, ⌘+T, or selecting the URL contents with ⌘+L (on a mac, at least). This search overlay looks very similar to what you’d get within VS Code with the ⌘+P shortcut. In the short time that I’ve used this browser, this is something I like.
Originally, this would be the paragraph where I would complain that you can’t hide the static sidebar. But, after a quick Google search, I learned that this is not true. It’s as easy as hitting the ⌘+S shortcut. Doing this enables a full-screen browsing experience. No bookmarks and no URL in sight. That’s good.
One feature I didn’t use yet was their split screen. And this is not a split screen in the sense that you have to instances of the Arc app open next to each other, it’s inthe app itself. This has a lot of potential, but so far, I did not feel the need to use this.
It’s not all positive. I’ve mentioned before that each Arc space has their own theme. I wanted to share the theme over the multiple spaces that I have, to make the browsing experience uniform regardless of which space was selected. This is not possible.
The Verdict
After a couple of hours of using Arc, I can say that it’s a browser with a learning curve. I can really see the benefits of Arc’s approach to web browsing, but I’ve noticed it’s only pleasurable when using shortcuts. When you need to navigate their UI, you might have to reserve some time to getting used to it. Admittedly, I’ve yet to figure their UI out. When you are already using shortcuts, the curve is not that steep. It is something to consider, though.
Also, I hope that they soon will create a feature that lets you share themes over all your spaces. If I’m missing something
I’ve set Arc to my default browser. As the Verge puts it correctly: “Arc isn’t perfect, and it takes some getting used to. But it’s full of big new ideas about how we should interact with the web — and it’s right about most of them.” I agree.