For about three months I've been using Arc as my default browser. Not that Brave didn't suit me before, but why not test it out. Still, the browser takes up too big a percentage of life, it's interesting to see something new in general, especially if it's hidden behind invites.
At first a lot of things were unusual, but I was hooked by how crazy the authors are. Arc seems to be deliberately made to differ in all aspects from all others. It's just an interesting experience, you didn't even think before that browsers could be made like this, there's been some stagnation for the last fifteen years since Chrome's release. After a couple of months I got used to it completely and I even started to like it, I can recommend it.
I liked most the idea of opening all external links in a separate window (Little Arc), like a preview, so as not to clutter the main window right away. This is from the category of those features that annoy you for the first couple of weeks, then you start to see the usefulness.
Arc looks very fresh. We're used to the browser looking like some wrapper over a site, but it tries with all these shadows and frames to push the site to the foreground instead. Most of the time I now have tabs completely hidden so nothing distracts from the page, fortunately moving between sites through a popup window, which here replaces the URL bar, is a pleasure. The Windows Aero-like frame, by the way, I still don't like, but it's just a distinguishing feature from the category of the notch on the tenth iPhone.
There's a feeling that they as a company will go bankrupt in the near future, because in the last update they stuck neural networks where I couldn't even imagine. If regular page search didn't give results, then you can ask it in free form with words, just like ChatGPT. And with a long hover over any link, Arc can show a summary of what's hidden behind that link. This is very cool. There are, obviously, some limitations in the spirit that a very long page doesn't fit in the context, but I think even so it costs them some huge money, so let's enjoy while there are investors.
Split inside a tab, not at the window level. The idea is cooler than it seems at first glance. You can essentially make any tab into a tab with several pages, not one. Add this to bookmarks in such a form. Well, awesome.
Spaces. Different spaces for separating the browser for work, life, for different people, etc. look awesome, but this is from the category of those features that you literally abandon the next day if you don't have a really hard necessity for it.
Easel. This is such a local page that you can assemble yourself from text, screenshots and links. I don't think having this in a browser is a good idea at all, but even this I use a couple of times a month now as a way to sketch an ultra-fast presentation. Cool also because from it you can make yourself some kind of dashboard on which to load interesting pieces of other pages.
Boosts. The ability for any site to write your own simple script or change colors/fonts on it and all that. Moreover, there's even a gallery of user boosts. This is super cool when needed, but on average it's a toy, of course. I only have one boost installed that cuts out YouTube shorts so I don't spend all my free time there.
And on top of that it's also Chromium. That is, all the familiar extensions continue to work, all the typical developer patterns remain the same. Everything is done as practically as possible, but with a very cool, I would even say revolutionary, vision. Developers keep in touch with users, tell so enthusiastically about everything new, the development pace is somehow shocking. It's nice to see the emergence of such products.
Vertical tabs without the ability to make regular horizontal ones. You just need to get used to this, or, like me, just hide them. Vertical tabs work very unpleasantly with video on the page, for example on YouTube or Twitch, there's not much space left under the video. Which, of course, is not a problem at all if you have a million inches ultrawide monitor, but on a laptop the solution is so-so.
Tabs are deleted if not used for more than a certain time. I have 12 hours, I don't experience problems at all, since I never collected tabs anyway, it's easier for me to find on Google or in history. I'm betting that this elegant solution is somehow connected to the fact that Arc doesn't very adequately utilize computer resources. And they decided to sell it under the sauce that if you don't use tabs, then you don't need them. For me this is really true.
Most annoying is the absence of a start page, I still haven't gotten used to this. In essence, all that exists as tools to make some of your own bookmarks - are pinned tabs. I hope they come to their senses, why else do I have Flame running on a virtual machine so as not to reconfigure bookmarks in every new browser.
For someone a stop factor for now will be the absence of a browser outside macOS. This means neither a mobile version with some seamless experience, nor the potential opportunity to work on Windows.
To sum up, I think all these features that look like toys will settle down, performance will be fixed, and we'll get a really excellent browser. I don't want to go back now at all.