Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Try It, You May Like It.

Try looking a little further down on the CLEAN SHOT window to find the screenshot. (FYI CLEAN SHOT is an Imgur competitor that includes collaboration features but you do not have to download anything to view the screenshot.) you just have to scroll down a little to see the screenshot image. Had you read all the way down the post you would have seen the following:

In retrospect I probably should have incIuded two more steps so that would have read…

1. Click here, (NOTE: this link will always download the current latest version of ARC with no questions asked.
2. If you are running macOS Sonoma you may be asked if it is permissible to download a file from arc.net and you must reply in the affirmative
3. G to your download folder and double click on the downloaded zip file to open it
4. In the resulting Finder window, drag the ARC icon and drop it on the Applications folder
5. Double click on the Applications folder to open it
6. Find ARC in the applications folder and double click on that to launch the ARC browser

I don't know how to make it any simpler unless ARC was available from the App Store. (The App store approval process takes months and ARC is currently releasing weekly updates so the App store isn't a viable option at this stage of development.)

theBrowser.company makes a point that they do not share user data, including email addresses with anyone. Given the fact that Arc is staking its reputation and future on that promise I am inclined to give it credence. Rigerous training of Spamseive has reduced my seen junkmail by roughly 75% with reasonable error rate in both directions. My biggest reduction came from cancelling my Google account.


In Arc go to Help > Share Feedback and make a request that be made optional. The developers are very responsive and with features coming, going, and changing on a weekly basis, next week's release might have it as an option. I haver already expressed a preference for using the built-in iCloud synchronization¹ and I am confident others would greatly prefer Google Cloud (which seems self-defeating to me).

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1. ask and ye shall receive, i just looked and the current version IS syncing via iCloud

Well, there's a Catch-22 for ya, because doing so requires that I open an account with my email address.

Since you've already got an account, perhaps you'd consider making the request on behalf of those of us who don't care to share our email addresses with Arc?

All of that, but I don't see any need to rethink my interaction with my browser and the Internet, particularly if there's going to be what appears to be a steep learning curve involved.

On the one hand, I'm sure that Safari can be improved upon, but on the other hand, I've never found myself longing for any particular sort of improvement.

You've always been like a kid in a toy store...searching for the newest and greatest toys, and in Arc, you seem to have struck gold, but I'm not as susceptible to the allure of what might lie beyond the next ridge, so I'll stick to my comfortable valley. i.e., Safari, until there's a compelling need to move on, rather then a merely fascinating one.

I plead guilty as charged. I spent most of my professional life using stone-age tools to create what would eventually become the bleeding edge and developed a taste for it. To me, the really fun stuff is usually just ahead of that bleeding edge. If I am not trying something new, I very quickly get bored. Thus my fascination with Arc.

Given your indicated propensity for a clean interface and using keyboard shortcuts, I ASSUMED Arc's minimal screen presence with no tool bar, no menu bar, nothing on the screen but the current web page would be "right up your alley".

And you read me as well as I read you.

Until just now, I had no particular idea what Arc was about. Its demand for an up-front email address is a deal breaker, so I never even launched it, let alone experimented with it, but as you've described it, it sounds like it requires more keyboard navigation, and presents less of a screen presence than even I prefer.

By way of example, I don't mind Safari's menu and tool bars. It's "eye candy," like FTM's "masthead," and other such stuff that takes up real estate but is both non-functional and distracting in the balance, that I don't want to see. And similarly, Safari offers enough keyboard functionality to satisfy me. I don't want to have to remember a slew of new commands to do basic stuff as seems to be the case with Arc.

In short, Arc sounds like an overkill version of my preferences while Safari comes pretty close to nailing them.

But I certainly appreciate your thinking of me.

At the risk of beating the subject to death, the keyboard shortcuts are [b]NOT REQUIRED. If they were, I would not be using Arc — I never remember the shortcuts and have to rely on Cheat Sheet to even know what they are.


I have said you have to use Arc to understand it, but I just came up with a description for the experience that fits for me. Traditional browsers like, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and my long time favorite Safari are BETWEEN the user and the internet content. Arc puts the internet content AT THE FOREFRONT and makes itself as unobtrusive as possible. The App feature in Safari 17.x is a similar attempt, but Arc is even more inclusive.

I've heard a lot about web apps, and that prompted me to create an FTM app. I wasn't the least bit happy with it. In fact, I hated it!

I can't imagine it being a boon to anyone other than someone who is unable to focus and needs their attention focused for them.

Most importantly, the app took away my mobility. I was stuck with the window on which the app was founded, and although I could create new windows - the only available menu bar functionality - I couldn't do much of anything with them, because my bookmarks and their attendant functionality were gone, as was my ability to create tabs. Further, my extensions' functionality was lost. I felt like I was trapped in a blind alley, as opposed to working with Safari, where I'm a "world citizen."

I'm sure there's more that bothered me that I can't think of, but that's more than enough.

That said, I guess I'm still willing to give Arc a try, and that said, have you, in your capacity as a registered user, requested that providing an email address be made optional, as I requested a while back?

[rant]I never jumped on OnyX, as so many others did, because when the first thing that happened when I launched it was it asked for full disk access with no explanation as to why, the second thing that happened was I trashed it. Likewise, when Arc demanded that I open an account with my email address before it would even launch, I trashed it. True, you've provided an explanation, but not everyone has the luxury of having a contact who's both running the app and understands why the email address may be a necessity.[/rant]

Safari's web apps are for those who prefer the iOS/iPadOS experience to macOS. I set up a few Safari Web apps because I preferred using their iPadOS or iOS app to accessing their site through Safari on my iPad or iPhone. They worked well and sounded like a good idea but for essentially the same reasons you gave, I deleted all of them with a hours or days, I still like the site specific apps on my hand-held devices (iPhone, iPad, Watch) and sometimes use them in preference to logging onto the site on my Mac. For example, when I am balancing my financial records in MoneyDance with the latest printed statement on my Mac I frequently open the bank app on my iPhone or iPad to verify recent transactions because it is quicker than logging on through Safari on the Mac. I could access the bank using a Safari app instead of the iPad or iPhone app but I didn't.

Note that was phrased in the past tense and the browser used was Safari. Arc changes the work flow. An Arc link works much like a Safari app but without the limitations. In fact, Arc is so flexible and you can move between and within windows to the point it is easy to get lost and be unable to find your way back through all of the links you went through from the beginning to where you are now.

Yes, I passed along your comment about the email requirement, but I cannot verify if it has or has not been changed/eliminated/etc without deleting Arc and losing many hours spent organizing, curating, and customizing.

Thanks for passing it along. There's absolutely no reason for you to go through a whole rigamarole when any of us can determine if the change has been made by simply d/l'ing the app and trying to launch it. (I'll check in a week or two and let you know.)

I'm willing to give Arc a chance, although I doubt that I'll switch from Safari, which suits my needs and work habits quite well.

TODAYS (09/05/2023) update;

AI browsing assistant

I realize that it's optional rather than default, but any AI really puts me off!

And ChatGPT in particular is something I wouldn't want access, let alone easy access, to.