A few weeks ago, I published a post detailing my move from Firefox to Vivaldi. In that post, I promised to write a follow-up post detailing my reasons for moving on from Vivaldi to Arc.
I registered interest in trying Arc as soon as I knew the browser was coming to Windows, as I had heard a lot of hype about it. I moved to Vivaldi while waiting for Arc to become available, as the beta role out for Arc was understandably slow.
At first, I wasn’t convinced by Arc. It still lacked too many features and had bugs, but that was understandable. Every couple of weeks or so, I would try Arc again, and eventually, I could transfer my bookmarks and other settings across.
So why did I decide to use Arc as my default web browser? Keep reading to find out.
User Interface design
Both Vivaldi and Arc allow tabs to be placed vertically down the side of the screen, making better use of the space on your screen. Both browsers also have a workspace. You can even define tabs that remain permanent in those workspaces.
For me, Arc has a cleaner user interface and has implemented it slightly better. For example, I have two Twitter accounts: one personal and one set up for this blog. With Vivaldi, I have to switch between accounts. In Vivaldi, I don’t have an instance of my personal Tweet running on my personal page, and an instance of Twitter for my blog is running in my writing workspace.
There is very little difference between Vivaldi’s and Arc’s User Interface designers. I prefer Arc because its interface is slightly cleaner.
Privacy & Security
Privacy and security are key concerns for anyone using the Internet, and the humble web browser is the main application at the forefront. Both Arc and Vivaldi have built-in ad trackers and blockers.
User Experience
The main reason I went to Vivaldi is the ability to organise various workspaces for the different areas of my life, which improved my ability to focus. I have done exactly the same thing in Arc, and it seems to work better. It supports different instances of web-based applications, allowing you to access them with the appropriate user for that workspace, improving my ability to focus even further.
Arc also seemed quicker and more responsive than Vivaldi, but it’s not that Vivaldi is slow.
Vivaldi became annoying, as every time I shut the browser down, it asked me to confirm that I wanted to exit. That is likely one of the leading factors why I went to Arc.
Conclusion
There is a learning curve to using Arc, and I don’t consider myself an expert user. But setting up workspaces and tabs doesn’t take too much effort.
If you use Firefox, Google Chrome, or Microsoft Edge, consider trying Vivaldi and Arc. This is especially true if you use your browser for various aspects of your life. I think you will find the workspaces provided by both browsers useful.
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