Is It Dia’s Time?

So over the past few months, I’ve been following the creation of AI browsers a lot. I think that, while AI might be rather divisive, there definitely could be something here.

My Main Browser

So even after all this time, I’m still using Arc as my main browser. It’s what I use at work, it’s what I use on my PC, it’s what I use on my phone and my iPad, it’s my go-to.

Why Arc Still?

Well one of the things that keeps me on Arc is a fundamental difference in how it treats tabs. The big thing is that Arc treats every tab like an app. Each sidebar is like a home screen and each favorites bar is like your dock. As someone who spends a lot of time in everything from Outlook to Excel to Notion to Figma, the browser is where my work gets done.

From Skeptic to Power User

When I first started using Arc back in 2022, I wasn’t a huge fan of it originally. I thought it was solving a problem I didn’t have, which it was. Back in that time I was taking all of my notes in Apple Notes, using Apple Mail, and I just wasn’t using a browser for much.

When I was first testing out Arc it felt like it was trying to solve a problem I didn’t have: I’m not a tab hoarder, most times I wouldn’t even have Safari open on a regular basis. Over time I started using more powerful productivity tools like Notion do to my schoolwork and that’s where this dynamic started to change for me. Fast forward to now: most of my life is spent in the browser between interacting on social media to checking my email to reading the news—it’s all done on the browser now.

So: Dia.

Funnily enough I started writing this story in Notion using Dia, but right at this moment I’m actually using Atlas, but that’s a story for another day. Where Dia’s at now is actually a really good feature coverage of what Arc has. No, it’s not exactly the same, that’s never going to be the case, but I find that I’ve largely been able to accomplish most, if not, all of the functionality from Arc within Dia.

The big kicker here were two main features: the updates to pinned tabs and tab groups. I don’t use these two features as a 1:1 to recreate Arc, but they are used relatively similarly.

The Arc-ification of Browsers

Funnily enough, while Arc might be relegated to an LTS state, its impact is still felt all over the browser world. Split tabs, vertical tabs, the pinned favorites paradigm, and more are all things that Arc really nailed. These are things that many browsers, including Dia, are trying to keep around because they were good ideas. While nothing will ever be quite like it, Arc’s impact will be felt for years to come and it did truly change the browser space, even if it only lasted for a little bit of time.

How I Do It

Pinned tabs are treated pretty much like my favorites; they’re always there no matter what, front and center (well, to the left) of my content at all times. From there I can break up particular categories of sites I go to regularly like social media, streaming, news, and a category of sites I refer to as “adulting” (Robinhood, MyChart, Fidelity, AmEx, etc.). Any other pinned tabs that I had are still saved as bookmarks like they were before Arc (things like shopping sites or other interesting sites that I’ve come across in my adventures on this thing we call the internet).

Like I said, it’s not a 1:1 relationship between the functionality in Arc and what I have in Dia, but it is equally as functional. I’ve got three different profiles all broken out: General, Stygian Tech, and Work that currently have much of the same stored when it comes to bookmarks, extensions, and passwords, but have very different sets of pinned tabs and tab folders (which are conveniently stored with your bookmarks when you close out of a particular profile).

Can I Say Goodbye to Arc?

The short answer is: no. While I can completely replace the functionality of Arc with Dia on my Mac, that’s not the only place I use the internet. I don’t have access to Dia on my phone, I don’t have access to Dia on my work-issued ThinkPad, and I don’t have access to Dia on my iPad. Until Dia becomes cross-platform like its older sibling, Arc will still by my mainstay browser. I try out other browsers (mostly Dia and Atlas these days), but Arc is still my source of truth for all of my saved links, and most of my day-to-day work.