Arc Browser Is Dead: 6 Features to Replicate in Chrome (2026)

Arc Browser stopped active development in May 2025. Its signature features — vertical tabs, split views, workspaces, and a command bar — can all be replicated in Chrome using a combination of extensions and Chrome 146’s native vertical tab support.

Key takeaways

• The Browser Company stopped Arc development in May 2025 and pivoted to Dia, an AI-first product acquired by Atlassian for $610M.
• Most of Arc’s core workflow maps directly onto Chrome: vertical tabs, named workspaces, command bar, Shift+Click peek previews.
• Little Arc mini windows have no Chrome equivalent — everything else is covered by Chrome 146 plus SuperchargeNavigation.

Arc Browser changed how a lot of people think about tabs. The sidebar, Spaces, the Command Bar — these were not incremental improvements. They were a fundamentally different way to use a browser. When The Browser Company announced in May 2025 that Arc was entering maintenance mode, the reaction from users was not indifference. It was grief.

This article is for those users: people who used Arc daily, loved what it built, and now need an arc browser alternative for Chrome that does not require giving up years of configured extensions.

What Happened to Arc

The Browser Company launched Arc publicly around 2023 and built a devoted following by rethinking browser UX from the ground up. Vertical tabs by default. Spaces for named workspaces. A Command Bar that replaced the omnibox. Little Arc for quick-lookup mini windows. Boosts for site customization. It felt like someone had finally taken the tab problem seriously.

In May 2025, TBC announced Arc was moving to maintenance mode. The team was pivoting entirely to Dia, an AI-first browser that launched publicly in October 2025. In September 2025, Atlassian acquired The Browser Company for $610M — and the focus moved firmly onto Dia.

Arc still works, but for practical purposes Arc is dead as an actively developed product. It receives no new features, and its development community has effectively disbanded. Some third-party Arc tooling remains — Arcify (v5.0.0, available on CWS as of February 2026) replicates Arc-style spaces using Chrome tab groups — but Arc’s original ecosystem is gone.

The community response is pragmatic. Most long-term Arc users are not looking for another browser to fall in love with. They are looking for a way to stay on stable, extension-supported Chrome while keeping the workflow features that made Arc worth using.

Why Not Just Switch to Zen or Dia

For Chrome users, the main problem with Zen Browser is the one Zen can’t solve: it’s Firefox-based. Chrome extensions don’t work in Firefox. If you’ve spent years configuring extensions, or work in an environment that requires Chromium, Zen ends the conversation before it starts. It’s good software — vertical tabs, workspaces, a Glance peek feature that closely mirrors Arc’s design philosophy — but “switch to a different browser with a different extension ecosystem” isn’t an answer to “I want to keep using Chrome.”

The most common complaint about Zen in Arc migration threads is: “I love it but I need my Chrome extensions.”

Dia, TBC’s new product, is an AI-first tool with a fundamentally different purpose, not an arc browser replacement for tab and workspace management. Arc users who have tried it generally report the same conclusion. The practical path for most Arc migrants is Chrome with the right extensions.

What You Can and Cannot Replicate in Chrome

Some Arc features have direct Chrome equivalents. Others do not.

Little Arc is the feature with no equivalent. The concept — opening a small, transient browser window for a quick lookup that does not pollute your main tab environment — does not map onto Chrome’s extension API surface. If Little Arc is why you used Arc, you will miss it.

Boosts can be approximated with Stylus for CSS customization and a UserScripts manager for JavaScript, but this requires manually setting up rules per site rather than Arc’s integrated flow.

For the core workflow — tabs organized vertically, grouped into named workspaces, with fast navigation and session persistence — Chrome can match it.

Vertical Tabs in Chrome 146

Chrome 146 includes native vertical tabs. You can enable them through the browser’s built-in settings without any extension. They appear in the left sidebar and can be collapsed.

The native implementation covers the basics: a list of tabs on the left, organized vertically, with a toggle to collapse the sidebar. What it does not include is workspace separation, tab search across all tabs, session snapshots, or any of the navigation shortcuts Arc users are used to. It is a structural improvement over the horizontal tab strip, but it is not an Arc Spaces replacement.

For users who only wanted vertical tabs and nothing else, the native implementation in Chrome 146 is sufficient and requires no additional software.

Getting Workspaces, Command Bar, and Peek Previews

For the fuller Arc workflow, SuperchargeNavigation is a single extension that covers the remaining surface area.

Workspaces. Arc’s Spaces were named, persistent tab groups — you could have a Work space, a Personal space, a Research space, each with its own tabs that did not bleed into each other. For anyone searching how to get arc workspaces in Chrome, SuperchargeNavigation is the direct equivalent. Each workspace holds its own tabs independently. Switching between workspaces switches the entire tab context, not just a filter view. Sessions are automatically snapshotted every time you switch — 50 saves with a time-travel slider — so you can recover a workspace state from earlier in the day if something goes wrong.

Command Bar. Arc’s Command Bar (Cmd+T) let you search open tabs, history, bookmarks, and actions from a single keyboard-driven interface. SuperchargeNavigation’s command bar opens with Alt+K and searches across open tabs, recently closed tabs, and saved sessions. It is keyboard-first: type to filter, arrow keys to navigate, Enter to open. If you built Arc muscle memory around not touching the mouse for tab switching, this is the closest equivalent in Chrome.

Peek previews. Arc’s Glance feature let you hover over a link to preview the destination page in a floating overlay, without opening a new tab. SuperchargeNavigation maps this to Shift+Click: hold Shift and click any link to open it in a peek overlay. The overlay closes when you click away, and the tab is not added to your workspace unless you explicitly keep it.

Tab search. Arc made it fast to find any open tab by typing. SuperchargeNavigation includes fuzzy search across all open tabs in the sidebar. If you have 40 tabs across three workspaces and you need the one with a specific article, you type a fragment of the title and it surfaces immediately.

Session recovery. Arc remembered what you had open. SuperchargeNavigation’s snapshot system stores up to 50 workspace states automatically. If Chrome crashes or you accidentally close a workspace, you can restore it from the snapshot history without any manual backup.

What to Expect if You Are Coming From Arc

The transition is not frictionless. Arc had a level of UI polish and integration that extensions cannot fully match. The side panel in Chrome is a panel alongside the browser, not a redesigned shell around it. The command bar is powerful but does not have Arc’s speed of launch. Peek previews require Shift+Click rather than a hover gesture.

These are real differences. Arc’s design team built something that felt native in a way that extensions, by definition, cannot fully replicate. If your priority is that specific aesthetic, Zen Browser is probably a better fit even with the extension trade-off.

If your priority is staying on Chrome — keeping your extensions, your profiles, your enterprise compatibility — and recovering as much of Arc’s workflow as possible, the combination of Chrome 146’s native vertical tabs and SuperchargeNavigation covers most of the functional surface area.

Arc set a high bar. The right response to its maintenance mode isn’t to accept the horizontal tab strip as the status quo. Chrome 146 has native vertical tabs. SuperchargeNavigation adds workspaces, a command bar, and session recovery. The functional case for staying on Chrome is solid. Whether it feels the same as Arc is a different question — and it won’t.