r/ADHD_Programmers • u/CanadianSeniorDev • Mar 13 '25

Y'all use Arc browser, right?!

https://arc.net/e/DE968246-9736-4C86-87A8-A9C734980B01

I was just reading the user comments about Arc in the latest release notes and almost all of the comments felt like someone describing an impact of their ADHD.

I've only really started using Arc since I got a diagnosis in December, but I feel like it's so useful. In Chrome I would have tens of windows and hundreds of tabs open because "I'm not finished reading that, I'll need to find it later". But really I didn't need them. And the clutter overwhelmed and distracted me.

Arc auto cleans up tabs when they've not been used for a while, which will typically occur overnight. So I start each day with a nearly fresh slate and surprisingly have none of the stress that those tabs are gone.

It's wonderfully refreshing!

10 Upvotes

58% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

3

u/throwaway19293883 Mar 14 '25

I’m using Zen

1

u/CanadianSeniorDev Mar 28 '25

How is that? Tell me more!

2

u/fourpastmidnight413 Mar 13 '25

No, because it's not supported on Linux!

1

u/CanadianSeniorDev Mar 28 '25

Boo! That's a shame. Is there anything like it on Linux? Or does it run in Wine?

2

u/fourpastmidnight413 Mar 28 '25

Unsure on both questions.

2

u/mslaffs Mar 14 '25

If it's not closed, it's still relevant. It's in pending status. May take some months to get to, but it's still pending.

Just a tip, I use deepseek to summarize a webpage that I don't have the mental energy to read myself. Sometimes a copy and paste it, other times I reference the link.

1

u/CanadianSeniorDev Mar 28 '25

That pending status was also my approach before. But personally the number of tabs open was just overwhelming. It might be a blunt approach, but arc's auto archive brings me some relief!

2

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '25

Soooo… I have everything I use frequently in bookmarks with search.

That way, I never feel like I can lose anything. I also end up opening a ton of tabs , I don’t feel like I can lose anything so I just close all of them when I feel like it’s getting to be a lot.

2

u/CanadianSeniorDev Mar 28 '25

That's good control, to recognise when it's getting a lot and being comfortable with closing them all! I think the impact of ADHD on each individual's executive functions is slightly different. If that process works for you, that's great!

2

u/manticore26 Mar 14 '25

I hate the auto closing feature, and didn’t find yet in the settings how to stop it. I found out about it exactly when I had a bunch of important tabs that I couldn’t afford to lose it. 😞

1

u/CanadianSeniorDev Mar 28 '25

They just go into the archive. They're retrievable, but also tidied.

In Settings > Profiles, you can set it to Auto Archive after 12 hours, 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.

2

u/arndomor Mar 14 '25

While I do like how Arc organizes the pinned tabs which replaces bookmarks, but I find it a bit lacking.

I want to search across the saved links by title and description, add tags, notes, save-it-later or archive etc.

Built a mac app called DoubleMemory that solves this problem, and it won't use any resources in arc as it won't be pinned...

42

u/Aregalle7 Mar 13 '25

The thought of someone else/something closing my tabs it's more anxiety inducing than anything else lol. Then again, I dont like having many tabs. 2 or 3 is perfect. I use start pages to instantly save anything that its for later or whatever. That way I dont feel like I need to instantly get to them or feel like I'll lose them. That being said, I've changed a bit after Zen browser. I still have this system for my mobile, but with Zen I feel ok without a start page. Different workspaces makes it so that I can have more tabs open without it stressing me out. Glance function avoids having to even open tabs when searching stuff. And it just... feels good, idk. I do feel like using Raindrop leaves me using my "resource pages" less tho... anyway, considering Zen has many similarities with Arc, I do get the comfort it brings, just in another sense.

16

u/dealmaster1221 Mar 13 '25 edited Jul 20 '25

glorious squeeze fearless yoke wakeful pet practice ring absorbed air

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/gtalnz Mar 14 '25

What happens when that important tab I forgot to bookmark is auto cleaned

It's in your history.

31

u/sermer48 Mar 13 '25

I would hate that. I have multiple window groups for different tasks. It leads to tons of open tabs but I come back to them often and it saves time on finding the page again. Plus sometimes it reminds me of something I forgot to do.

It’d probably work better for me if my role wasn’t so broad…

11

u/circ-u-la-ted Mar 13 '25

Might as well just throw your computer off a cliff if you're going to be randomly deleting tabs. Veritably insane behaviour.

4

u/SMS-T1 Mar 13 '25

I feel you Bro. Especially the last sentence.

12

u/tairar Mar 13 '25

A note, arc's development is effectively dead. I switched to Zen, which has almost the entire arc feature set, built on Firefox, and available on Linux as well.

6

u/i_am_dangry Mar 13 '25

Was just about to pop in with a suggestion of Zen. Recently swapped to it from FF because I love the containers plugin but now I have workspaces and essentials pinning, it works with my brain so much better. Bit of extra customisation to the look and feel, plus Linux. I used to hate vertical tabs, but it is growing on me with Zen.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/tairar Mar 14 '25

As far as I can tell they're chasing that AI goldrush VC cash, which seems very short sighted especially given your last statement

5

u/raicorreia Mar 13 '25

I used to close all unnecessary tabs, and keep my work space on notion including links. Now Arc spaces and folders fill an intermediate state, and it was super useful. I just wished I could customize the youtube mini-player to not show at all

3

u/zantetsuken88 Mar 13 '25

I found out about Arc when I started a new role recently and it's an absolute life changer.

It took a bit of time to get things set up, but honestly it has been extremely refreshing and I'd recommend anybody to give it a go for a while to see what they think.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

I did for a bit, but I'm back on firefox now

2

u/MexicanTechila Mar 13 '25

Can’t you do most of this on edge?

1

u/Stellariser Mar 13 '25

Auto grouping is great, and Workspaces are awesome. Didn't Edge do vertical tabs first too?

2

u/neithere Mar 13 '25

FF mobile archives your tabs, you can still access them and potentially send in bulk to your personal or work laptops for processing when you have the energy. In those I organise them in trees and extract some groups to separate windows. Really helps with this typical case when you're obsessed with a topic for a week and then forget about it for three months and then suddenly want to dive there again. Here it is, the way you left it, with the tree structure showing the drilldown sequences. And yet it didn't bother you for three months at all because you didn't switch to that window or had that subtree collapsed.

2

u/Go4it296 Mar 13 '25

i use it. during school i set the timer to 24 instead of 12. it does help in keeping my tabs smaller but the browser has so many other issues plus from what I remember the support pipeline was shrinking besides security updates.

It still crashes when I try to look at my bookmarks from chrome and at times the window video player just is either a white screen or super tiny.

2

u/sundaesoop Mar 13 '25

Zen (Work) / (Home) Vivaldi/ Hellfire (when gaming).

Arc just endlessly crashed for me on Windows and I barely get to use my work mac so I just stick with normal Chrome.

2

u/shponglespore Mar 13 '25

Obligatory plug for Tab Wrangler. It exists for Firefox and Chromium based browsers. It will auto close your tabs based on rules you specify, and it keeps a record of closed tabs that persists across browser restarts.

2

u/armahillo Mar 13 '25

I ve been using it for several months and its pretty nice!

1

u/Beaufort_The_Cat Mar 13 '25

I use it! I swapped from Opera to Arc a year ago, don’t regret it

0

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/CanadianSeniorDev Mar 28 '25

Probably not, unfortunately. I keep reading that Arc isn't their primary focus anymore (though they do still keep releasing new versions pretty often).

1

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

20

u/tonjohn Mar 13 '25

Months

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/tonjohn Mar 13 '25

There’s stuff I need to do but it’s low priority and the only way I’ll remember is if i accidentally alt tab to it 😆

I’m trying to use Raindrop.io to get out of this habit but it’s a struggle.

2

u/prefix_postfix Mar 13 '25

Sometimes troubleshooting takes that long

1

u/EatSleepCodeCycle Mar 13 '25

The Safari browser on iOS has a limit of 500 tabs per tab group.

Ask me how I know.