The Arc browser will stop working on Mac and Windows on December 22, The Browser Company announced on Oct. 22, ending a browser best known for its vertical tabs and Spaces. The company says it is putting its engineering and security effort into Dia, its AI-first browser. New Arc accounts could no longer be created from the day of the announcement.
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The shutdown is staged rather than abrupt, with two later dates that matter to anyone still using the browser on a daily basis. Accounts are deactivated on the final day and personal data is deleted within 30 days after that.
The Arc shutdown schedule
TechCrunch, reporting on the announcement, laid out three dates. Arc accounts could not be created after Oct. 22. On Nov. 23, Arc Search on iOS and Android loses its AI features, including Browse for Me; people can no longer sign in or sync tabs, though the app keeps working as a basic local browser. On Dec. 22 Arc stops working entirely on Mac and Windows, accounts are deactivated, personal data is deleted within 30 days, and Arc Search is removed from the Google Play Store. The company posted the notice on X, which TechCrunch linked; that page could not be opened directly for this report, so the details here rest on TechCrunch’s account of it.
The company gave a security reason for the timing. In the announcement, as TechCrunch quotes it, The Browser Company wrote that “keeping a browser secure takes constant, dedicated work that is only increasing in the age of AI.” It added that Dia “was built from the ground up to meet today’s security standards,” and said its engineering and security teams will concentrate there from now on.
Dia, the AI browser taking Arc’s place
Dia is the browser the company has been building since Arc’s feature work stopped. TechCrunch’s report on the June 2025 beta launch described a Chromium-based browser whose address bar doubles as an interface to a built-in AI chatbot. The chatbot can search the web, summarize uploaded files and answer questions about every open tab, and an opt-in History feature lets it use seven days of browsing history as context. A Skills feature lets people create small code snippets that act as shortcuts for browser settings, such as a reading layout.
Dia carries over equivalents of several Arc features, according to TechCrunch. Profiles, formerly called Spaces, separate work and personal browsing. Vertical tabs remain available as an optional sidebar layout, and Pinned Tab Groups replace Arc’s Folders. Passwords, bookmarks, extensions and history transfer to Dia, Arc features stay free there, and AI is optional.
From a development halt to Atlassian
The end date follows a long wind-down. In a letter to Arc members dated May 26, 2025, The Browser Company said it had stopped actively building new core features for Arc but would keep shipping Chromium upgrades and fixing security vulnerabilities. The letter said open-sourcing Arc was blocked for the time being because its custom infrastructure, the Arc Development Kit, also underpins Dia, and it described Dia as a separate product rather than an Arc successor update. In its words at the time, the company was not trying to shut Arc down.
The 2025 letter also gave numbers that explain the pivot. It reported that only 5.52% of daily active users regularly used more than one Space, one of Arc’s signature features, while Dia’s chat-with-tabs feature was reportedly used by 40% of daily active users and its personalization by 37%. On security, the letter said the company had grown its security engineering team from one person to five and was investing in red teaming, bug bounties and internal audits. Those figures are the company’s own, from the spring of 2025, and the October announcement does not update them.
Chief executive Josh Miller made the same point about open-sourcing to TechCrunch in May 2025, saying the company would love to open-source Arc someday but could not do so meaningfully without also open-sourcing the development kit, which he called core to the company’s value. He also said Arc suffered from a novelty tax: many people found it too different and complex for the value it offered. Social media reaction to the shutdown was largely disappointed, TechCrunch reported, with many users renewing requests for an open-source release.
Atlassian agreed to buy The Browser Company for $610 million in cash, announced on Sept. 4, 2025, with Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes saying today’s browsers were not built for work. The two companies planned an AI-powered browser optimized for the many software-as-a-service applications living in tabs. Dia was already the company’s focus when the deal was announced, and the December 22 shutdown is the point at which Arc itself leaves the picture.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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