My new browser of choice – ARC
I know how much we dislike most of the popular browser options. Edge is too Microsoft, but Chrome is too Google. Firefox seemed like a decent alternative, but it’s a bit difficult for what I use a browser for daily.
Plus, all three chew up memory when running more than a couple of tabs.
I need more than a couple of tabs. I need multiple profiles with multiple tabs open in each profile. (M365 logins to different environments are notoriously tricky, let alone having numerous websites with various social media presences.)
Simply put, I can’t log in and out of accounts all day, and I also don’t want to deal with my computer running out of memory. I spent many years walking that thin line. So, I was intrigued when I saw someone talking about a new browser they were using that was easy to use with multiple profiles and optimized for memory usage. I was skeptical but intrigued enough to give it a try.
That browser was Arc for Mac.
It took a little while to figure out how to set it up and configure the different “spaces.” You can use different profiles and set up various spaces within one profile. It uses the Chromium infrastructure, so all the Chrome extensions I use for 1Password, Buffer, etc., were available. It took a little longer to get it running because the extensions are kept separate in the different spaces, allowing you to use different extensions in each space or the same extension with different accounts in each space.
Like I said, it took a while to get used to. Eventually, I got it the way I wanted and started using it. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the integration with uBlock, the AI tools like Ask on Page or ChatGPT in the command bar, etc. But I was hooked once I got the hang of having five profiles running in spaces simultaneously, with 3-4 tabs per profile and no fan noise*. (And yes, moving tabs between spaces is a click away.)
I’m also using it on Windows with my work laptop, and I enjoy the same pleasure of easily accessing multiple sets of tabs without draining the machine’s local resources.
I’m still learning, and the Browser Company is still innovating, so I recommend you check it out and see if it helps your need to access far too many web pages simultaneously. Or, if you’ve already tried it, let me know your thoughts.
- – for reference, I wrote this blog post with five spaces and 24 tabs open and a handful of other programs, including OneNote, Safari, iMessage, a Mastodon client, and 1Password. There is zero fan noise. Activity Monitor indicates memory pressure in the green.
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