Hello, I am here to madly scream about tech again!
So, Arc for Windows has now officially launched. You can get it on their website. When I first got access via a waitlist, the browser was indicated as a beta, you were warned of bugs. I ignored the shortcomings at the time (like when I spoke about it on TNC) because it wasn’t done, they were constantly changing things, which is what I expect from an early beta. But now that it’s out for anyone, and it isn’t called a beta, I think it’s fair to judge it like any other browser on Windows. Forget all the gimmicks and hype, here are some of the issues I have with the current build:
It takes a significant amount of time to open.
It sometimes renders websites weirdly until you scroll.
Extension support is finicky and all open in separate windows.
99% of settings are not accessible from the dropdown, instead you need to type in the full settings URL.
Passkey support doesn’t work if you use a password manager to store passkeys.
The dark theme isn’t really that dark.
Crashes if you move tabs around too much.
Scrollbars are huge.
Importing from other browsers barely works.
And more…
I gave The Browser Company the benefit of the doubt, but releasing a beta as a stable browser is dumb, it doesn’t do basic things well, and its nicer features are missing. It feels like Windows is an afterthought, they don’t show a screenshot of it on their site, only the macOS version. It feels they made it to tick a box.
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arc for windows sucks, but arc on macos is pretty neat. i just wish we could disable spaces because at the moment there's a super easy procrastination hole for me (just swipe into the non work space)
my frustration is mainly that it feels like the browser company clearly just want to make a mac app, which is fine, but if you’re gonna build a windows version then it can’t be released in such a crappy state. really disappointing since a lot of people will try this once and never again, which i don’t blame them, and all arc had to do was call this an open beta
the windows app is simply not ready. they launched too early, probably in anticipation of all the product launches this season
while I don’t know a whole lot about it, I know 4 things:
it’s not open source
it has AI
tabs are vertical
it uses chromium
and of those 4 things, I don’t like 3 of them.
yeah not being open source and having ai gimmicks i cringe, chromium is also just meh, especially with manifest v3 coming soon. still insane that they release something this clearly unfinished 
FYI I’m aware that things will get updated, which is great, but it’s insane to me that something this clearly unfinished and bare-bones is being released without a massive disclaimer saying it isn’t finished and is still a beta product, because that’s what it is. Some people have had a lot worse issues than me with the current build, some find that the browser simply won’t open, even if they uninstall and reinstall it. The browser just being generally slow, which I will say that I also feel the browser is noticeably slower than my Firefox install. Oh, and you are REQUIRED to make an Arc account to use the browser, which is insane when no other browser requires that.