Key Takeaways
- The Browser Company froze Arc development on May 27, 2025; Atlassian acquired the company for $610 million in October 2025.
- Arc still works and receives security patches, but no new features will ship.
- Product teams loved Arc for Spaces, the command bar, and sidebar tabs — features that need replacing, not just substituting.
- For most teams the realistic move is staying on Chrome and adding a sidebar extension like Leap, not switching browsers entirely.
- Dia, the AI-first browser from the Arc team, is a different product and not a true Arc successor for product workflows.
If your product team adopted Arc Browser between 2022 and 2024, you've probably been waiting since last May for someone to tell you what to do next. Arc development is frozen, the company that built it has been acquired by Atlassian, and the replacement product is something else entirely. Meanwhile your team has 50-plus Spaces of accumulated discovery research, sprint context, and customer evidence that nobody wants to lose.
This guide is written specifically for product teams — not solo Arc fans. It covers what happened to Arc, why team workflows are harder to migrate than individual ones, the alternatives worth considering, and a step-by-step migration approach that keeps your shared context intact.
What Happened to Arc Browser?
On May 27, 2025, The Browser Company CEO Josh Miller published an open letter to Arc members announcing the company was freezing Arc's development. The letter explained the team had concluded that Arc's “novelty tax” — the steep learning curve required by its radical UI — kept it from reaching mainstream adoption, and that the team's energy was moving to a new AI-first browser called Dia.
Four months later, on September 4, 2025, Atlassian announced it was acquiring The Browser Company for $610 million. The deal closed on October 21, 2025. Atlassian's stated rationale was integrating the team's expertise into Atlassian's enterprise products; the future of Arc itself was not part of the announcement.
As of mid-2026, Arc still works. You can download it, sign in, and your existing Spaces sync. Chromium-based security patches ship on a normal cadence. But no new features have arrived since the freeze, and the team that built it is now working on Dia and Atlassian projects. For a product team that depends on Arc's workflow, this is the practical end of the road.
Why Did Arc Matter to Product Teams Specifically?
Arc became popular with product teams faster than with general consumers for a clear reason: the way it organized tabs matched the way PMs and product designers actually think about projects.
The core mechanic was Spaces. Each project — a feature, a research project, a launch — got its own Space with its own pinned tabs, its own color, and its own command-bar context. Switching from Discovery to Roadmap Review wasn't an act of memory. It was a keyboard shortcut. The sidebar replaced the top tab strip, which felt right to anyone managing more than 20 tabs at a time.
Beyond Spaces, Arc shipped a few features that mattered for product work: a command bar (⌘+T) that searched open tabs, history, and bookmarks at once; split view for comparing a Figma file against a PRD; Easels for whiteboarding without leaving the browser; and per-tab profile separation (work vs. personal) without juggling Chrome profiles.
For a working PM, Arc reduced the friction of switching contexts more than any other tool. That's what made it sticky, and that's what makes it hard to replace with a generic browser.
What Should Product Teams Look For in an Arc Alternative?
Solo Arc fans can switch to any browser that has vertical tabs. Product teams have a longer requirements list because the tool affects how people share work, onboard new hires, and hand off projects.
Spaces or workspaces. Non-negotiable. Without project-scoped tab grouping, the migration is a downgrade for everyone.
Keyboard-first navigation. Arc's command bar set the bar high. An alternative without strong keyboard support will quietly slow down every PM and designer on the team.
Cross-device sync. A working PM uses a laptop and often a second device (home desktop, iPad). The same Spaces have to be on both.
Extension compatibility. Most product teams depend on a stack of Chrome extensions: Loom, Notion Web Clipper, Linear's browser integration, 1Password or Bitwarden, Grammarly. Anything that breaks that stack creates real productivity loss.
Shareability. The team-specific need. Can a PM share a Space with a designer? Can a new PM hire inherit a Space template? Most consumer browsers ignore this question; team-adopted tools answer it explicitly.
Path back to Chrome if it doesn't work. Every browser migration has failure cases. Tools that lock teams into proprietary formats are riskier than tools that work on top of Chrome.
Which Arc Alternatives Work Best for Product Teams in 2026?
The 2026 options break into three categories: full browser replacements, Chrome sidebar extensions, and Dia (the AI-first browser from the original Arc team).
Full-browser options:
- Sigma OS — Mac-only, the closest full-browser feel to Arc. Has Workspaces and Split view; weaker extension library than Chrome.
- Zen Browser — open-source, Firefox-based, cross-platform. Sidebar tabs and Workspaces. Smaller ecosystem, evolving fast.
- Brave with Sidebery — power-user combo, vertical sidebar via the Sidebery extension. Strong privacy story, narrower workflow polish.
Chrome sidebar extensions (stay on Chrome, get Arc-style UX):
- Leap — built around the PM use case, with Spaces, nested folders three levels deep, keyboard-first navigation, and cloud sync. Free tier covers 4-6 Spaces.
- Workona — older option, broader audience. Has Spaces and tab autosave but lacks nested folders.
Dia (AI-first browser from the Arc team):
- Dia is designed around AI agents and a simpler interface, not around Spaces and sidebar tabs. It's worth trying if your team's workflow is heavy on AI-assisted research, but it's not a substitute for Arc's workspace model. Most product teams who tried Dia in beta reported it felt like a different product, not an Arc upgrade.
For most product teams, the realistic 2026 path is Chrome plus a sidebar extension. It keeps your Chrome extension stack intact, supports a clean migration from Arc Spaces, and gives the rest of the team an off-ramp if a future PM hire doesn't want to learn yet another browser.
How Do You Migrate a Product Team Off Arc Without Losing Your Spaces?
A clean team migration takes about a week of partial effort. The goal is to move Spaces, not just tabs, and keep the team's shared context working.
Week 1, days 1-2: Audit and decide. Run an inventory of which Spaces each team member actively uses. Most PMs have 4-8 active Spaces; a lot of “archived” ones can stay in Arc as read-only reference. Pick a target tool (most teams converge on Chrome + Leap or Chrome + Workona, especially if 60%+ of the team already uses Chrome for personal browsing).
Days 3-4: Export shared bookmarks. Arc lets you export bookmarks as HTML. Each team member exports their bookmarks and imports them into the new tool. For Spaces themselves, there's currently no automated export — but a working trick is to use Arc's “Share Space” feature to generate a list of URLs, then re-import those into the new tool's Spaces.
Day 5: Rebuild a few key Spaces in the new tool. Each team member rebuilds their 3-4 most-active Spaces from scratch. This sounds painful but takes 5-10 minutes per Space and forces useful pruning — most PMs find half their old Spaces don't need to exist anymore.
Days 6-7: Run parallel. Keep Arc open as a read-only archive for a week while everyone works in the new tool. Most teams stop opening Arc by day 5 of parallel running.
Week 2: Decommission Arc. After the parallel week, the team uninstalls Arc as default and removes it from new-hire onboarding docs. Keep one team member with Arc installed for another month in case any old reference needs to be re-exported.
Should Your Team Switch to Dia, Chrome Plus Sidebar, or Another Browser?
The answer for most product teams in 2026 is Chrome plus a sidebar extension. Three reasons.
First, Chrome has the deepest extension library of any browser, and your product team's stack (Linear's integration, Loom, Notion Web Clipper, password managers) lives there. Migrating to a non-Chromium browser breaks parts of the stack.
Second, sidebar extensions ship faster than full browsers. Leap and Workona shipped Spaces, nested folders, and team-share features within a year of demand; full browsers take longer because they have to maintain the underlying browser too.
Third, the off-ramp is clean. If a sidebar extension doesn't work for your team, uninstall it and you still have Chrome. If a full-browser migration fails, you're moving the entire team twice.
Dia is worth piloting if your team's daily work is AI-assisted research, but it's not currently a workspace-first browser. Sigma OS and Zen are worth trying if your team is heavily Mac, anti-Google, or willing to live with a narrower extension stack. For everyone else, staying in Chrome and adding a sidebar is the lowest-friction path that preserves what Arc gave you. The companion piece on the best browser setup for product managers walks through the exact Chrome configuration most PMs end up with.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Arc Browser still available in 2026?
Yes. Arc still works and can be downloaded from arc.net. The Browser Company froze Arc development in May 2025 and only Chromium-based security patches ship now. Atlassian acquired The Browser Company for $610 million in October 2025. Arc is in a stable maintenance state with no roadmap for new features.
Is Dia the official replacement for Arc?
Dia is the new browser from the same team that built Arc, but it's not a direct replacement. The Browser Company described Dia as an AI-first browser with a simpler interface, designed to overcome the steep learning curve they felt held Arc back. Most product teams that tried Dia in beta reported it doesn't replicate Arc's Spaces and sidebar workflow.
What's the best Chrome extension to replace Arc?
The two most-mentioned options among product teams in 2026 are Leap and Workona. Leap was designed around the PM use case with Spaces, nested folders three levels deep, and keyboard-first navigation; Workona is the older option with broader audience but lacks nested folders. Both have free tiers that cover the common product-team setup of 4-6 Spaces per person.
Can I import my Arc Spaces directly into another browser?
There is no automated import from Arc Spaces into other browsers or extensions as of mid-2026. The practical approach is to export Arc bookmarks as HTML, share each Space's URL list via Arc's Share feature, and rebuild the 3-4 most-used Spaces manually in the new tool. Most teams complete this in a single afternoon.
Should our whole product team switch at the same time?
Not all at once. The smoothest team migrations run a one-week parallel period where one or two PMs adopt the new tool first, document any rough edges, and then the rest of the team switches. This catches integration issues (a Linear extension that breaks, a missing keyboard shortcut) before they affect the full team. The companion tab management guide for PMs covers the day-to-day system that holds up after the migration.