The Stack browser: the setup order that holds up

Stack is a desktop browser for Mac and Windows that replaces tabs with cards laid out side by side, grouped into collections it calls Flows. If you searched for "stack browser" because you want to know whether it is still worth setting up, the short answer is this: the product is still downloadable and still sells licences, but its own documentation describes it as a closed beta with no data import and no Chrome extension support. That combination decides the setup order. You can run it next to your current browser for work that lives in plain web apps, and you should not move anything that depends on extensions or saved passwords until those gaps close.

This guide is published by the maker of an app aggregation browser for macOS, which is mentioned once near the end. Everything below about Stack comes from its own website, checked on October 18, 2026.

Which "Stack" this is

The search term is crowded, so it helps to rule out the wrong results first.

Stack (stackbrowser.com) is the spatial browser this article covers. Its home page calls it "a Spatial Browser for Mindful Online Living" and lists cards instead of tabs, Flows, one-key shortcuts, multiple profiles, and ad and tracker blocking.

BrowserStack is a different company entirely. It sells cloud testing for websites and mobile apps across real devices and browsers. It shows up for the same query because of the shared words, not because of any connection.

Stacks - Browser is a separate app by an independent developer, listed on the App Store as a free utility for iPhone and iPad. It presents each page as a floating window you can drag, resize, and layer. On the store listing it is marked "Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS."

If the goal is a card-based browser for desktop work, Stack is the one to evaluate. The rest of this article is about it.

What Stack actually does

Stack changes two things about a normal browser: how pages are arranged and how they are grouped.

Pages appear as cards in a horizontal strip rather than as tabs stacked in a bar. Several cards are visible at once, so a chat app, a document, and a task board can sit next to each other in one window without a separate window manager. Navigation leans on the keyboard. The site describes a "Fly mode" and single-key shortcuts for moving between cards and Flows.

Flows are named collections of cards. The pricing page shows examples such as work, personal, study, news, shopping, and a trip. Each Flow keeps its own set of cards, so switching Flows swaps the whole strip.

Profiles sit above Flows. The home page says you can add as many profiles as you want and switch between them, with Personal, Work, and Incognito shown as examples. Profiles are where sessions and logins are kept apart, which matters if you use two accounts of the same service.

On the technical side, Stack's FAQ states that it is based on Chromium and built on a fork of Electron. It says each card uses the same memory and CPU as a Chrome tab, and that a built-in suspension feature lets you put cards to sleep to cut memory use. It also states that Stack runs locally and that feature usage is tracked with third-party analytics.

Pricing and access as of October 2026

The pricing page lists three tiers. Figures below were read from that page on October 18, 2026.

Tier	Price	Profiles	Flows	Color themes
Starter	Free	Unlimited	5	3
PRO Subscription	$144 per year, or $15 billed monthly	Unlimited	Unlimited	11
PRO Lifetime	$199 one time	Unlimited	Unlimited	11

The Lifetime tier also lists two exclusive cursors, a licence linked to an NFT, and access to a community share program. Live collaboration appears on both paid tiers marked as coming soon. The page shows a limited run of 4,242 lifetime licences with 993 shown as sold.

Getting in is a separate question from paying. The FAQ answer to "Is Stack publicly available?" says it is in a closed beta and not yet publicly available, and that early access goes to Stack Legacy users, people on the waitlist, and buyers of lifetime licences. The three entry routes it lists are an invitation code entered on the start screen, a lifetime PRO licence unlocked by email or by connecting a wallet, and an upgrade from inside Stack Legacy, the earlier version the team maintained from 2019 to 2021.

The download page offers builds for Intel Macs, Apple Silicon Macs, and Windows. The FAQ says there is no Linux version.

The refund policy in the FAQ allows a refund request within 14 days of purchase. Purchases that came with an NFT follow a different process involving a listing on OpenSea.

The documented limits that shape your setup

Three statements on Stack's own site decide what you can safely move.

No import from other browsers. The FAQ says it is not yet possible to migrate data from other browsers, and that importing history, bookmarks, active sessions, and passwords is being added gradually. In practice, every login has to be done by hand, and your bookmarks stay where they are.

No Chrome extensions, according to the FAQ. The FAQ entry on Chrome extensions says they are not currently supported. The home page, in contrast, has a block headed "All your favorite Chrome extensions." The two statements do not agree. Until you have confirmed on your own machine that a specific extension installs and works, plan as if it does not.

Dates on the roadmap have passed. The FAQ gives Q4 2023 as the expected date for Linux and describes an extension alpha by "the end of February" without naming a year. Those passages read as written some time ago. They do not tell you what the current build can do, only what the plan was.

None of this makes Stack unusable. It means the honest way to evaluate it is with services that work as ordinary web pages: webmail, chat, calendars, task trackers, documentation, dashboards. Password managers, ad blockers you rely on, and anything with an extension-only workflow should stay in your current browser during the trial.

A setup order that survives real work

Most failed setups follow the same pattern. A weekend goes into arranging cards, the arrangement lasts about a week, and then a deadline pushes everything back to the old browser. The cause is usually the order, not the software. Layout gets decided first, and the two things that actually determine whether the arrangement survives, account separation and extension dependence, get discovered later.

Step 1: get access before planning anything

Download the build for your machine, open it, and confirm you get past the start screen. If you are waiting on an invitation code, use the waiting time to list every web service you open at least once a day, and mark each one as either "works as a plain page" or "needs an extension."

Step 2: create one profile per identity

Profiles hold sessions, and the free tier allows unlimited profiles, so there is no reason to skimp. Create one per account identity, not one per project: your main work account, a client or second employer account, and a personal account. Name each profile after the account, because a project name stops being accurate when the project ends.

Then test before building on top. Open the same service in two profiles and confirm both stay signed in at once. Check where downloads land. Check whether a notification tells you which account it came from.

Step 3: build a small number of Flows

The free tier caps you at five Flows, which is a useful constraint even if you pay. Name Flows after what you are committed to this month, such as a client, a launch, or a weekly routine, rather than after categories like "tools." Keep each Flow to the cards you actually use together.

Step 4: learn the keys, then set a review date

Spend the first few days moving only with the keyboard shortcuts. After two weeks, look at what happened. If most of your working day was spent in Stack without effort, move more. If you kept drifting back to the old browser, you have lost nothing, because nothing was deleted.

Running it day to day without surprises

Once the first Flows are in place, a few habits keep the setup from drifting.

Put idle cards to sleep. Because each card behaves like a Chrome tab in memory and CPU terms, a strip of twenty live cards costs roughly what twenty Chrome tabs would. The suspension feature described in the FAQ is the lever here. Sleep cards you only check once a day, such as analytics dashboards or a weekly report, and keep only the cards you type into awake.

Keep the old browser as the record. During the trial, bookmarks, saved passwords, and extension-based tools stay in your current browser. When you find a page worth keeping, bookmark it there. That way, ending the trial costs nothing, and continuing it means a clean import later if the import feature arrives.

Watch notifications per profile. With several profiles signed into similar services, a notification that does not say which account it came from is the most common source of mistakes. If a service sends desktop notifications from more than one profile, decide which profile is allowed to notify and mute the others.

Write down the version you are on. Stack's documentation and its current build may not match. Noting the version number and the date you tested a feature makes it easy to tell later whether something changed or whether you misremembered.

Where a different kind of tool fits

Stack is a general-purpose browser with a new layout. Some people searching for it are really looking for something narrower: a way to keep a fixed set of web apps open, each signed into the right account, without tabs at all. That is the job of an app aggregation browser, a category that includes Wavebox, Shift, Rambox, and Ferdium.

These tools give each web app its own slot in a sidebar, and many isolate sessions per app so two Gmail or two Slack accounts can stay signed in together. The trade-offs are different from Stack's. Layout is less flexible, but account isolation and notifications are usually the center of the design. If your main frustration is juggling accounts rather than arranging pages, the comparisons on this site are a quicker way to see the options: compared with Wavebox, compared with Shift, and compared with Rambox.

One example on macOS keeps every app in its own cookie container and groups apps into workspaces, each with its own color, default search engine, and bookmarks, as described on the workspaces page. Its pricing page lists a free plan with one workspace and three apps, and a Pro plan from $5 per month billed yearly or a $129 one-time licence, which adds unlimited apps and multiple accounts per service.

What to change first

If you want to try Stack, download it, create profiles named after your accounts, and move only extension-free web apps for two weeks while your current browser stays as it is. If account juggling is the real problem, compare app aggregation browsers instead, starting with SpaceDeck or the comparison pages above.