After several years of beta testing, Browser's Arc browser application has finally arrived on Microsoft's operating system, namely Windows, which, not only according to critics, but also according to users, beats its currently most popular competitor, Chrome, by miles. There's been a lot of hype about Arc on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit, so we thought we'd take a look to see what the hype is all about – or whether The Browser Company's app has truly achieved such a revolutionary development. Spoiler: Yes, but the transition isn't as easy as you might first think.
Face cannot be considered a traditional browser, it offers much more than that. While the purpose of most of these apps is to provide a search bar into which you can type what you want to search for, Arc has rethought everything you know about browsers — starting with the fact that the app doesn't have a top address bar by default, but not just Search bar too. The easiest way to search for a web page or term is to press the key combination control + T, thus bringing up the command bar, already familiar in Apple's macOS; You can start writing here.
All this so that the currently displayed web page uses the entire available window size, and if we switch to full-screen viewing, then in the case of Arc it literally means full-screen browsing, without frills, titles and annoying buttons.
However, you still need to navigate between web pages somehow – you can do that in the side panel. If we point the mouse pointer to the left side of the browser window, it jumps to the front and immediately shows the tabs we have open. When you tap on a new page, the sidebar disappears by default so it doesn't bother you anymore, but Face also gives you the option to record its position, so it's always visible.
Order is the soul of everything
By the way, the side panel is one of the central elements of the browser, in fact, from here we can access all the important functions, including the page refresh button and the forward/back buttons. One of the most useful elements is an improvement called Spaces, which copies the functionality of tab groups that have been in Safari for years — but also makes it better. With the help of Spaces, you can create separate workspaces, and you can open separate windows in each workspace that do not overlap with other workspaces. We can create separate spaces for the work-related websites or pages needed to organize the trip, which you can switch between with one click. A special plus point is that spaces can be renamed at any time, and their colors, icons and emojis can also be customized.
It's also a great development that multi-window viewing is available within the browser, so you can browse up to two websites at the same time – however, you don't have to open the face twice, everything is done within the app. The built-in screenshot creator is also a useful development that, like macOS, has many options: you can take a screenshot of the entire screen, but it is also possible to take an image of only a window or only a specific part of the screen. window. In addition, it is also a given that we can modify the screenshot as we like: we can change its size, put comments on it, and even draw on the image. You can save the completed images to your computer or to the built-in Arc library, from which you can retrieve them later at any time, for example, if you want to insert them into a note, because Arc also allows you to do that.
So it is clear that Arc is more than just a browser – it is like its own little operating system, where we can find everything that can be useful when surfing the Internet; Basic skills can also be expanded.
Chrome, without the bad stuff
The browser builds on the foundations of Chrome, allowing you to use the usual Google browser extensions in Arc as well. However, the company says that despite the Chromium base, Arc has been stripped of all the “junk” that Google's browser contains in order to support its advertising business. The browser company is also committed to keeping user data safe: it says it never tracks what users search for, nor does it create a profile for them — and it also refrains from reselling user data.
Of course, it's questionable what the company wants to make money from, since Arc is completely free to download — however, the browser company hasn't shared much about this at the moment, they've only revealed on their FAQ page that they would never build a business model based on On ads. Despite this, they are asking users not to hesitate to put their trust in them, which wouldn't be hard to grant otherwise, based on their expressions so far – the company is working more transparently than usual, and the browser app it develops could truly be an era-maker.
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