Arc browser on a Mac, and the habits it leaves behind

Arc still installs on a Mac, still restores every Space and pinned tab, and still feels quicker to move around than a strip of forty tabs. The download button on arc.net works today. What has changed is the status line beside it: as of October 18, 2026, the front page of arc.net says that Arc receives Chromium updates only, and points anyone who wants active security patches to Dia, the company's newer browser. So the short answer to "is Arc on Mac still usable" is yes, with a specific limit on what kind of maintenance it gets. The rest of this guide explains that limit with sources, lists which Arc habits are tied to Arc and which are portable, and gives a checklist for either staying deliberately or moving without losing a week.

What Arc's own pages say about its status

Three primary sources describe where Arc stands, and they are consistent with each other.

The first is the notice on the Arc homepage, which reads: "Arc receives Chromium updates only. For active security patches and enterprise-grade protection, download Dia instead." The same page still offers Download Arc for Mac and Download Arc for Windows.

The second is a public letter from the company's chief executive, Josh Miller, published in 2025 as a letter to Arc members. It states that the team stopped actively building new Arc features, while continuing regular Chromium upgrades and fixes for security vulnerabilities and related bugs. It also explains why Arc has not been open sourced: Arc runs on an internal framework the company calls ADK, the Arc Development Kit, which also underpins Dia, so releasing one would mean releasing the other. The letter says the company is not trying to shut Arc down.

The third is the Atlassian announcement dated September 4, 2025, which says Atlassian entered an agreement to acquire The Browser Company of New York, the team behind Dia and Arc. The stated plan in that post is to make Dia the browser for knowledge workers, with security, compliance and admin controls built in. The post does not describe new Arc features.

Read together, the picture is narrow and fairly clear. Arc is maintained, not developed. It inherits engine updates from Chromium, the open source project underneath Chrome, Edge and many others. Problems that live in Arc's own interface code are the part least likely to get new attention.

What "Chromium updates only" means for daily use

For most people the practical risk is not that Arc stops launching. It is the slow accumulation of small things that no longer get fixed.

Area	What to expect, based on the sources above
Rendering and web compatibility	Follows Chromium, so sites that work in Chrome should keep working
Engine security fixes	Arrive with Chromium upgrades
Arc-specific bugs (sidebar, Spaces, sync quirks)	Unlikely to be prioritised
New features	None planned for Arc; new work goes to Dia
Long-term direction	Tied to Dia and the Atlassian acquisition

The contrast with Dia is spelled out on the Dia security page, which says Dia is also built on Chromium and that the team keeps it aligned with new Chromium releases and hotfixes on an aggressive cadence, alongside independent security assessments and a bug bounty run through HackerOne. The homepage of Dia says it is free to download and available for macOS and Windows.

Whether the difference matters depends on what the browser holds. A browser used for reading articles carries little risk either way. A browser that stays signed in all day to email, banking, payroll and client systems is a different object, and its maintenance status deserves the same scrutiny as any other piece of software with that much access.

Which Arc habits are tied to Arc

People who like Arc rarely describe a feature list. They describe a way of working. Splitting that way of working into its parts shows which parts travel.

Spaces. Grouping sites by context and switching with a swipe. This is the most portable idea. Dia has profiles with separate tabs and logins, and most browsers in the app aggregation category group apps into workspaces.

Profiles inside Spaces. Arc's homepage describes organising work, study and hobbies "all in one window with Spaces and Profiles". Profiles are what keep two logins to the same site apart. Spaces on their own only sort tabs.

The command bar. Arc opens it with Cmd+T, which is also how the Arc Max page tells users to switch on its AI features: open the command bar, type "Arc Max", then choose Turn on Max. Almost every modern browser and launcher has a comparable command palette.

Split View. Two pages side by side in one window. Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi and several app browsers now offer some version of it.

Self-cleaning tabs. Arc moves unpinned tabs out of the sidebar automatically. This is the hardest habit to replace, because few other browsers do it by default.

A detail from the 2025 letter puts this list in perspective. The letter reports that only 5.52 percent of Arc's daily active users regularly used more than one Space. The habits that feel defining in forums were, by the company's own data, used by a minority. That makes it worth writing down which of the five above shaped an actual working day before choosing anything else.

Spaces separate context, not accounts

A common surprise when moving away from Arc is discovering that two Spaces were never isolating accounts. Spaces in the same profile share cookies. If two Gmail accounts appeared to work side by side, it was because they were in different profiles, or because Google's own account switcher was doing the work inside one session.

This matters because the replacement has to solve the right problem. If the need is "keep work tabs and personal tabs visually apart", any browser with tab groups or workspaces will do. If the need is "stay signed in to two accounts of the same service at once", the replacement needs real session separation, which in Chrome means separate profiles and separate windows, and in an app aggregation browser means a separate cookie container per app.

The second need is where many Arc users end up after a few weeks, because the sites they keep pinned are web apps, not pages: mail, chat, calendars, project tools, design tools. A browser that treats each of those as its own app with its own session keeps the one Arc behaviour people miss most, which is the sense that each tool has a fixed place to live.

Staying on Arc deliberately

Staying is a reasonable choice, especially on a Mac that is mostly used for reading and light work. Doing it deliberately means a few checks.

Keep it updated

Arc updates itself, and Chromium upgrades are the part that still arrives. If automatic updates were turned off at some point, turn them back on. An Arc install that is behind on Chromium has neither the old maintenance nor the new.

Move the sensitive sessions out

The simplest risk reduction is to keep banking, payroll and admin consoles in a browser that is actively developed, and leave Arc for everything else. This costs nothing and removes most of the exposure.

Decide whether Arc Max still earns its place

Arc Max is the opt-in set of AI features inside Arc. The Arc Max page lists what it does: 5 Second Previews, which generate a preview of a linked page when hovering over the link and pressing Shift; Ask ChatGPT from the command bar, which requires a ChatGPT account signed in on the current Arc profile; Tidy Tab Titles, which shortens the titles of pinned tabs; and Tidy Downloads, which renames downloaded files. These features are part of the product that is no longer being developed, so they are best treated as they are today rather than as something that will improve. If none of them is part of a daily routine, turning Max off removes one more moving part from a browser that is now in maintenance mode.

Keep an exit ready

Arc's Spaces, pinned tabs and folders are stored in Arc's own format. Before anything goes wrong, check that the browser intended as the fallback can import from Arc, and do a test import once. Several browsers and app aggregation tools list Arc as an import source today, and the time to find out how well that works is while Arc is still running normally.

Moving without losing the first week

If the decision is to move, the order of steps matters more than the destination.

Inventory first

Open each Space and write down three things: the pinned tabs, which accounts each one is signed in to, and any site that is only reachable through a bookmark. This list is the actual migration. Bookmarks import in seconds. Remembering which of two Notion accounts a pinned tab belonged to does not.

Import bookmarks, then sign in by hand

Bookmark import from Arc is widely supported. Logins and cookies generally do not transfer between browsers, and passwords are best moved through a password manager extension rather than browser-to-browser export. Plan an hour to sign in to each service once in the new browser.

Rebuild Spaces as the unit that fits

For page-based browsing, rebuild Spaces as tab groups or profiles. For web apps, rebuild them as apps grouped by role, such as a work group and a personal group, with each account as its own entry. The Workspaces page shows what that grouping looks like when each app keeps its own session, and the Supported apps list shows which services can be added by name rather than by URL.

Run both for a week

Keep Arc installed and open next to the new browser for five working days. Every time something is reached for in Arc, note it. By Friday, that list is either empty or shows exactly what the new setup is missing.

Where an app aggregation browser fits

For readers whose pinned tabs are mostly web apps, a browser that keeps each web app in its own window and session is a closer match to how Arc was actually used than a general browser with a new sidebar. The trade-off is scope: these tools are built around a fixed set of apps, not around open-ended reading.

One option in this category is a macOS app that imports bookmarks from Arc, Chrome, Safari and others without changing the source browser, gives each app its own cookie container, and adds a command palette on Cmd+K and split view on Cmd+. Its free plan covers one workspace with up to three apps, and the paid tier unlocks unlimited workspaces and multiple accounts per service, as listed on its Pricing page. It requires macOS 12 Monterey or later, according to its FAQ.

What to change first

Check that Arc is fully updated, then move banking and admin sessions to an actively developed browser this week. If most of the pinned tabs are web apps, try importing the Arc bookmarks into SpaceDeck and run it beside Arc for five working days before deciding.