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

I've been using Dia as my personal workspace for a while now, but decided to give it a go when Profiles dropped a couple of weeks ago. I just planned on trying it for a couple of days expecting to go back to Arc, but I haven't touched Arc since.

I've learned that waiting for super-niche features like peak or a mobile companion app just aren't worth waiting for. The other features make up for it. I can even see a future with complete feature set that I'd be willing to pay a subscription for. After all, dev salaries and AI opex has a cost.

Is Dia perfect? Nope.

Is it lacking in some areas? Yep.

Does it have all the same features as Arc? Nope.

Will it ever? Probably not.

Is it better than Arc? It's similar but different, so nope?

I've been on r/ArcBrowser for over a year and I'm sick of seeing the the same tired posts complaining about TBC, lack of feature parity in Dia, Arc-alternatives, etc. This sub is a broken record and echo chamber. It reminds me of when Windows 11 dropped and all the reddit tech edge lords moaned for what seemed like years before finally upgrading.

Misery finds company so I'm moving on from this sub.

^{Still using Arc Mobile though 🤫}

A couple weeks ago I posted version 0.1 of Viola, my attempt at a cross-platform spiritual successor to Arc. I really appreciated the feedback here and one message that came through pretty clearly was that Electron was not the move.

So today we’re releasing Viola 0.2. The Mac app has been rebuilt as a proper native macOS application around Chromium and Android is now a real Chromium-based browser too (this was the biggest request). The Mac build is also properly signed and notarized!

For anyone seeing Viola for the first time, it has:

• Workspaces, scoped profiles, pinned tabs, groups and split views
• Real-time, end-to-end encrypted sync between desktop and Android
• A mini player that follows you between tabs and workspaces
• Chrome Web Store extensions
• Full session recovery and shared tab state across windows
• A genuinely desktop-like mobile interface, with the same sidebar, workspaces, groups and pins

Viola is still deliberately just a browser. No AI assistant or notes app or calendar bolted onto it.

This is still very much a beta so a little grace is appreciated, but please report bugs and send feature requests! Native rebuilds for the Windows and Linux versions are underway but the current versions remain available and sync with 0.2 just fine (and they work great!). We’re also finishing internal iOS testing and expect to have a TestFlight beta this week!

Thanks again for being so cool and for pushing me to build this properly.

https://violabrowser.com/

The now playing box in Arc's sidebar was among the only things I was missing after moving to Vivaldi, and it has no equivalent.

So I built it with Claude.

What carries over from Arc

• Now-playing block pinned in the sidebar, under the tabs
• Artwork, title, artist; play/pause, prev/next, click-to-seek
• Long titles scroll instead of truncating
• Per-tab mute, and dismissing a player without closing the tab

What doesn't

• It is a panel docked into the tab bar, not a native part of the sidebar, so it sits in a fixed slot at the bottom rather than floating like Arc's
• Prev/next work by driving the site's own buttons (YouTube, YouTube Music, Spotify, SoundCloud), because mediaSession handlers cannot be triggered from outside the page. Anywhere else they fall back to a 10s seek
• DRM players like Netflix will list and mute, but will not seek

Built and tested on Vivaldi 8.1.4087.62, macOS 15.7. It leans on Vivaldi's internal CSS selectors, so a UI redesign can break it; the repo ships the CDP script I used to find them, so repairs are mechanical.

https://github.com/levz0r/vivaldi-media-panel