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Jul 30, 2026
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Arc Browser is the Chromium browser built around Spaces, vertical tabs and split view, still working and still receiving security updates, but no longer in active development since The Browser Company moved its team to a new browser in May 2025.
Arc still works, still runs Chrome extensions and still gets Chromium security patches.
What it does not get, and will not get again, is features: The Browser Company stopped developing Arc in May 2025 and moved the whole team to a new browser.
Download Arc Browser 1.117.0 - free, Windows and Mac, with the above in mind.
What Happened to Arc
In May 2025 The Browser Company's chief executive published an open letter confirming that active development on Arc had stopped. The team moved to Dia, an AI-first browser built to be simpler than Arc.
Atlassian then bought The Browser Company, completing the acquisition in October 2025. Dia is where the engineering effort goes now.
Arc was not shut down and its servers were not switched off. It was put into maintenance, which in practice means Chromium security updates and nothing else.
Is It Safe to Keep Using?
For now, yes. Builds are still being issued with updated Chromium and security fixes, which is the part that matters most in a browser.
The release notes tell the story plainly. Version 1.117.0, released on 30 July 2026, moves Arc to Chromium 151.0.7922.47 with security and stability work and no feature changes, which is what every recent release has looked like.
The question is not whether Arc is safe this month. It is whether you want your browser to depend on a product nobody is building, and how much notice you would get if the patches stopped.
What Arc Still Does Well
The reason people hold on to it is the layout, and that has not changed.
- Spaces - separate sets of tabs and bookmarks for work, personal and projects, all in one window.
- The sidebar - tabs live vertically, pinned items stay put, and everything else clears itself out over time.
- Split View - two or more tabs side by side without a second window.
- Profiles - genuinely separate sessions, with their own logins and extensions.
- Chromium underneath - sites behave, and Chrome extensions install normally, because it is the same Chromium engine.
It also blocks ads and trackers by default, which is still true and still useful.
The AI Features, and Their Catch
Arc Max covers the AI additions: tab titles shortened automatically when you pin them, downloads renamed based on what is in them, short previews of a link before you open it, and asking questions about the current page instead of hunting with Ctrl+F.
They work well. The catch is that they run on The Browser Company's servers rather than on your machine.
Server-side features on a product in maintenance mode are the part worth thinking about. The browser will keep opening pages whatever happens, but the AI layer depends on a service that is no longer anyone's priority.
If You Are on Windows
The Windows build always trailed the Mac one, and it was still catching up when development stopped. You can see it in the version numbers: the Mac branch is well past 1.150 while Windows sits around 1.11x.
Features that shipped on macOS never all arrived, and now they never will. If you read a review praising something you cannot find, that is usually the reason.
Everything else works. Installation is a small stub that pulls the full browser down, which is why the file on this page is under 2 MB.
What to Use Instead
If you want the Arc layout from something actively developed, Zen Browser is the closest match: workspaces, vertical tabs and split view, built on Firefox rather than Chromium.
If the AI is what you came for, Comet Browser and ChatGPT Atlas are the current AI-native options, both maintained.
For a conventional browser with strong tab management, Vivaldi has more customisation than Arc ever offered.
- Brave Browser - Chromium with ad and tracker blocking built in, the closest privacy equivalent.
- Mozilla Firefox - the main independent engine, with vertical tabs of its own now.
- Floorp and LibreWolf - Firefox forks for customisation and for privacy hardening respectively.
- Microsoft Edge - already installed, and closer to Arc's sidebar idea than most people expect.
- Tor Browser - when anonymity matters more than convenience.
Dia, the browser Arc's team moved to, is not listed here yet. The rest of the field is in our web browsers section.
Moving Your Data Out
Nothing is locked in. Arc stores bookmarks and passwords in the standard Chromium way, so any Chromium browser will import them directly from an Arc install.
Spaces do not survive the move, since no other browser implements them the same way. Zen's workspaces are the nearest thing to a like-for-like rebuild.
Export your passwords to a file first if you are switching to a Firefox-based browser, and delete that file afterwards.
Quick questions
Is Arc Browser discontinued?
Development stopped in May 2025 and the browser is in maintenance mode. It has not been shut down, and it still receives Chromium security updates.
Is it still safe to use?
At the moment yes, because security patches are still shipping. The risk is future rather than present: nobody is building it, and there is no roadmap.
Who owns Arc now?
Atlassian, which completed its acquisition of The Browser Company in October 2025. The team's focus is Dia rather than Arc.
Will Arc get new features again?
There has been no indication of that. It has not gained a feature since development stopped, and the successor product is where the work goes.
What is the closest alternative?
Zen Browser for the workspace and vertical-tab layout, or Comet if the AI features were the draw.
Can I move my bookmarks and passwords out?
Yes. Arc uses the standard Chromium profile format, so other Chromium browsers import from it directly, and Firefox-based browsers can take an exported file.
Download Arc Browser 1.117.0 if you still want it, or tell us what you switched to if you have moved on.
