Hello, I am here to madly scream about tech again!
So, Arc for Windows has now officially launched. You can get it on their website. When I first got access via a waitlist, the browser was indicated as a beta, you were warned of bugs. I ignored the shortcomings at the time (like when I spoke about it on TNC) because it wasn’t done, they were constantly changing things, which is what I expect from an early beta. But now that it’s out for anyone, and it isn’t called a beta, I think it’s fair to judge it like any other browser on Windows. Forget all the gimmicks and hype, here are some of the issues I have with the current build:
It takes a significant amount of time to open.
It sometimes renders websites weirdly until you scroll.
Extension support is finicky and all open in separate windows.
99% of settings are not accessible from the dropdown, instead you need to type in the full settings URL.
Passkey support doesn’t work if you use a password manager to store passkeys.
The dark theme isn’t really that dark.
Crashes if you move tabs around too much.
Scrollbars are huge.
Importing from other browsers barely works.
And more…
I gave The Browser Company the benefit of the doubt, but releasing a beta as a stable browser is dumb, it doesn’t do basic things well, and its nicer features are missing. It feels like Windows is an afterthought, they don’t show a screenshot of it on their site, only the macOS version. It feels they made it to tick a box.
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