Arc is a free Chromium-based browser for Mac and Windows from The Browser Company, known for its vertical sidebar, Spaces, Profiles and Split View. The company stopped building new Arc features on May 27, 2025 to focus on Dia, its AI browser, and Atlassian completed its $610 million purchase of The Browser Company on October 21, 2025. Arc still downloads and works, but its homepage says it receives Chromium updates only and sends people who want active security patches to Dia. Its security bulletin still listed an Arc-specific fix for Mac in September 2026.
This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
Arc changed what a browser window looks like. Instead of a row of tabs across the top, it put tabs, pinned sites and folders in a sidebar down the left, and hid the address bar behind a command bar. Spaces separated work, study and personal browsing inside one window, each with its own pinned tabs and color, and Profiles kept logins apart. Split View tiled several pages side by side, and unpinned tabs archived themselves after a while, so the clutter cleared on its own.
The Browser Company of New York built Arc on Chromium, so Chrome extensions and websites work as they do in Chrome. Around that it added Boosts for restyling sites with your own CSS and JavaScript, Little Arc windows for quick links, Easels for collecting clippings, and Arc Max, a set of free AI features that tidied tab titles, previewed links and answered questions about a page. It opened to everyone on Mac in 2023 and arrived on Windows in 2024.
Arc's reputation was strong among designers, developers and people who live in dozens of tabs. Its own site still carries the praise, "Arc is the Chrome replacement I've been waiting for", above a homepage that now sells a different browser.
On May 27, 2025, CEO Josh Miller published a letter to Arc members explaining why the company had stopped building new Arc features. The argument was that Arc, for all the loyalty it earned, had not become a browser for most people, and that the company would put its effort into Dia, a simpler browser built around AI. Arc would stay available and keep receiving maintenance, including Chromium updates.
That split is where things stand. Arc does what it did in 2025, with no new features. Little of what made it special needed updating, so for existing users the browser feels the same. What changed is the long-term outlook: a product in maintenance tends to fall behind, and any bug not treated as urgent is unlikely to be fixed.
On September 4, 2025, Atlassian, the maker of Jira and Confluence, agreed to buy The Browser Company for $610 million in cash, and it completed the acquisition on October 21, 2025. The plan Atlassian described is an AI browser for knowledge work, and that browser is Dia.
Arc's own homepage makes the priority plain. Visitors to arc.net land on "Meet Dia, the next evolution of Arc", promising weekly security updates, SOC 2 certification and "the Arc DNA you know (and love)", with the Arc download links further down. Dia itself is pitched as "the browser for better days at work": a morning brief built from your calendar and inbox, answers drawn from your tabs and connected tools such as Slack and Notion, meeting pages that open with the right documents, and Dia for Work with SSO and admin controls. It is a free download for macOS, with a Windows version promised for fall 2026; the $20-a-month Pro tier added in August 2025 was retired at the end of May 2026.
The homepage line that matters is this one: "Arc receives Chromium updates only. For active security patches and enterprise-grade protection, download Dia instead." Chromium updates carry fixes for the browser engine that renders pages and runs JavaScript, where most serious browser vulnerabilities are found. What Arc adds on top, including the sidebar, sync, Boosts and its own interface, is where a Chromium-only update policy leaves gaps.
Those layers have had serious bugs. In 2024 a researcher found a critical flaw, CVE-2024-45489, in the way Boosts synced through Arc's cloud database, which could have let an attacker run code in other users' browsers. The Browser Company fixed it on August 26, 2024, before it was used against anyone, and launched a bug bounty program afterwards.
The picture in 2026 is less bleak than the homepage suggests. Arc's security bulletin lists an Arc-specific address-bar spoofing flaw fixed in version 1.159.0 for Mac on September 23, 2026, plus a string of fixes in the Arc Search mobile apps through the year, all reported through the company's vulnerability rewards program. So reported issues still get fixed. What you do not get is proactive security work on Arc's own code, and the company is telling you as much.
For a new user choosing a browser in 2026, no. Learning Arc's sidebar, Spaces and shortcuts is an investment in a product its maker has stopped building, and the same company offers a supported alternative. The features that made Arc distinctive also exist elsewhere now: vertical tabs are built into Edge, Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox, and several browsers offer Spaces-style workspaces.
For an existing user, there is no emergency. Arc keeps receiving Chromium updates, reported security issues were still being fixed in September 2026, and your setup keeps working. Two situations do call for moving now: company-managed devices, where IT teams need a vendor committed to security updates, and accounts where a compromise would be expensive, such as banking or admin access to production systems. Everyone else can plan a move on their own schedule: export bookmarks, note your Spaces and pinned tabs, and try the alternatives while Arc still works.
Dia is the obvious first stop, made by the same team and marketed to Arc users, with profiles, split views and tidy tab grouping carried over and AI at the center. It suits people who want the assistant; users who loved Arc for its calm, manual organization may find Dia a different kind of browser. It is Mac-only until the Windows version, promised for fall 2026, ships.
For AI browsing without The Browser Company, Comet from Perplexity puts an assistant beside every page and can carry out tasks on websites. OpenAI's rival, ChatGPT Atlas, shut down on August 9, 2026, and its browsing agent now lives in the ChatGPT desktop app. Brave is the privacy-focused Chromium option, with vertical tabs, a built-in ad blocker and its own assistant, Leo. The closest match to Arc's design is Zen, a free open-source browser based on Firefox that copies the sidebar, Spaces and split views, which makes it the easiest landing for people who want Arc to stay the same.
Worth comparing before you decide: Dia Browser, Comet, Gemini and Brave Leo.
Not shut down, but no longer developed. On May 27, 2025, The Browser Company told Arc members it had stopped building new features to focus on Dia, and Arc moved into maintenance. The Mac and Windows versions still download from arc.net, existing installs keep working, and the homepage now says Arc receives Chromium updates only.
Safe enough for casual browsing, with caveats. Chromium updates carry fixes for the underlying browser engine, and Arc's security bulletin still listed a fix for an Arc-specific address-bar spoofing flaw in version 1.159.0 for Mac on September 23, 2026. But the homepage tells users who want active security patches and enterprise-grade protection to download Dia, so for work accounts, banking and managed devices, a browser under active development is the safer choice.
Dia is The Browser Company's AI browser, pitched on arc.net as the next evolution of Arc and on its own site as the browser for better days at work. It reads across your tabs and connected tools, writes briefs and reports, and keeps Arc ideas such as profiles and split views. Dia is a free download for macOS, with a Windows version promised for fall 2026. Its $20-a-month Pro tier, launched in August 2025, was retired at the end of May 2026, so there is currently no paid plan.
Atlassian, the company behind Jira and Confluence. It agreed on September 4, 2025 to buy The Browser Company of New York for $610 million in cash and completed the acquisition on October 21, 2025. The Browser Company runs as part of Atlassian, and its product work goes into Dia.
The Browser Company has not announced an end date, and Arc continued to receive updates through September 2026. It has also not promised maintenance for any fixed period. Anyone relying on Arc for daily work should export bookmarks and note their Spaces setup now, so a move later is quick rather than forced.
No. Arc was released for macOS in 2023 and Windows in 2024, and Linux support never shipped. On phones, Arc Search for iPhone and Android is a separate, simpler app built around AI search results, and it also appears in Arc's 2026 security bulletins.
Dia is the natural move for people who want The Browser Company's ideas plus AI, though it is Mac-only for now. Zen, a free open-source browser based on Firefox, copies Arc's sidebar and Spaces most closely. For AI-first browsing, Perplexity's Comet is the main option now that OpenAI has shut down ChatGPT Atlas, and Brave suits people who prioritize privacy.
Anthropic's assistant, built around long-context reasoning and code. Strong at $20; the usage limits are the unpublished part.
Google's assistant, bundled with storage and Workspace access. Plus is $4.99, Pro $19.99 with a 1 million token context, and Ultra from $99.99.
Visual automation with 3,000+ apps, billed in credits: a free plan with 1,000 a month, then $9 to $29 a month billed yearly for 10,000 credits.
