WebManifest V3, if you want me to rant let me know 🫨

Would love to hear the rant

Alright, after some pondering it's just this : Arc uses chromium for a browser foundation like every other browser alt like Opera, Edge excluding Safari and Firefox. But it's also created and sorely controlled by Google from chrome itself. 1/?

And with the fact that they control 63% of the browser market while 40 % of internet users use adblockers means that there's tons of missed revenue extraction from allowing adblocker extensions built on chromium to proliferate, affecting google's ecosystem (duh). 2/?

So they've been making the whole chromium project to migrate to an update (Webmanifest V3) that virtually cripples all forms of older adblockers. With it being open source, it could be forked but that's a losing battle insofar (look at OG Msft Edge). 3/?

So the "choice" is to either take it or leave it. Leaving all adblockers crippled. Along with yt bs with adblockers too. But on arc's side, the software features are really just redundant. Despite what the ceo aspires for arc to be, it's still a SaaS app. 4/5

Using the same colonized ground with ai to "search the web for you" yuck. Also safari is memory hungry on my 2015 intel MacBook Air as is, Arc just makes it choke. 5/5

Was gonna write a response to this explaining some of the more behind-the-scenes changes in MV3, why that whole thing is more complicated than it seems at first glance, etc. (1/2)

But then I realised that it doesn't matter. Just use the things you like, and don't use the things you don't. The whole browser debate is stupid imo. Also I didn't want to completely fill up Charlie's notifications lol (2/2)

Arc is great but I want a minimalist browser, as neutral and invisible as possible. Some of the stuff that Arc offers, I‘d rather do on the OS level. That said, I‘m a fan and keep an eye on it, it just did not become my default browser.

Also the startup time of Chromium browsers on macOS seemed to be negatively affected by large amounts of activated fonts. At least that was my observation a few months or years ago. Quite annoying until I figured out the cause. Could be solved by now for all I know.

Number one would be the sidebar. My brain is to used to to have tabs at the top. Second, too many features you end up forgetting them. I love the team but it feels like everything is an experiment so I don’t trust it. Last, Safari is 10/10 so I don’t really have a reason to move

The trust is the thing that gives me a tiny tiny bit of anxiety using it all the time. Still do

It doesn't feel right for me. (Windows)

it took me around five earnest tries before it stuck

Nice to haves and didn’t find anything fundamentally needed. Slowed down my computer more than chrome. Tried twice

Using Arc for a while now, lack of the concept of bookmarks is one thing I hope they change. Pinned tabs are great until you need as much RAM as possible for other programs like after effects

I really liked the folders and spaces feature and use it for planning trip itineraries where I need a set of open tabs for a long period of time. Arc is my secondary browser atm. Primary is Safari.

It took a while but Auto-archiving and Spaces made me make Arc the default. But it has become/becoming bloated, I’m constantly facing issues with loading time - so much that I’m considering going back to Safari.

The main reason for me was that it doesn't support iCloud Keychain

Reaaaaaally slow for me, it slowed down my (albeit older) machine more than any other browser to the point of being unusable. I have a new machine since, and this was a while ago so I’d consider giving it another try 😇

The chrome/UI of Arc always felt a little corny and none of the features out the gate were useful to me personally (plus I cannot abide sidebar tabs for some reason)

it's simply too much visual noise. sometimes customization and the influx of features simply overcomplicates the experience. I've used Safari for a decade, it works for my needs. Arc is cool, but that is about where it stops for me. The coolness didn't translate for me.