I’m Openly a Dia Skeptic

So I’ve been rather vocal about what I think about The Browser Company’s choice to move on from building Arc to starting to build Dia. Safe to say I was disappointed. Not only was Arc something novel and something I came to love, but I also felt like it was the better tool for the future that The Browser Company wanted: the browser to be your home on the internet.

Then, when The Browser Company was acquired by Atlassian, I eulogized the company. I was skeptical of their future. To me it felt like they were giving up—I’ve never seen a company go enterprise like this and done well, but I think I’m being proven at least a little bit wrong. The Browser Company is back to shipping weekly and these new features feel really great to use.

What’s New with Dia?

Dia’s made some huge progress in the last couple of weeks, and it’s been progress that has made the browser honestly indispensable for me, nailing some things that even kept me from Arc in the early days.

Feeling More Like Safari

The big thing that Dia has over Arc now is the combination of iCloud Passkeys and Apple Pay. These are features that weren’t necessarily locked down to Safari, but there weren’t really any browsers that were implementing them as features. While they’re not as integrated as in Safari (Apple Pay has to be completed on another device, working how iCloud passkeys work in most non-Safari browsers), they’re still good feature adds for someone who prefers Apple devices over others.

Feeling More Like Arc

Other features Dia recently added were pinned tabs that look and feel like the Favorites in Arc, as well as the ability to rename your tabs. Both of these features were things I used extensively in Arc and were a big part of how I used the browser.

The Future I Want for Dia

While all of this is great, it’s still not quite there. I don’t think Dia will be done until it does more to replicate the behavior of Arc in some way. It doesn’t have to be a 1:1 replica of the browser, but I do think there are a lot of things that I still want from Arc that aren’t in Dia.

Arc’s Sidebar Is Just Too Good

The sidebar paradigm was something that I really enjoyed. Having all of the tabs grouped together in sidebars is something I use a ton at work. I break up my sidebars by customer I work with, then I have folders of pinned tabs for different things like project trackers, documentation, and the like.

Not having the ability to sync the sidebars like this (and even to quickly switch profiles with the swipe of a trackpad) hinders my ability to use Dia at work (though the fact that I’m forced to use a Windows laptop also makes that impossible off the bat). Being able to have a lot of this functionality would make working between multiple customers and multiple profiles way easier for someone who’s an Arc power user. The advanced features that Dia has adopted should cover the bases for a basic Arc user, but the Arc power users will feel like some things are missing. Maybe that’ll get fixed in the next few weeks or so.