2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Arc Web Browser Introduces Focused AI Features
Has anyone had an issue with Arc freezing and being unresponsive? I use it on a headless Mini, but when it freezes I can’t even force-quit it. The rest of the machine is responsive.
Diane
I use it with a headless Mac Studio, though not hugely, and leave it open all the time.
Not seen it freeze.
It has happened to me twice in the past couple of weeks. I was kind of wrong about the machine being responsive - it is to a degree where I can still use other apps but it won’t even restart. I had to manually power it down and bring it back up and now Arc is working fine again.
Diane
I’ve now been using Arc as my default browser for several months. Perhaps oddly, though, there are several key features I just don’t use. I’m still fuzzy-minded about the different uses of Peek and Little Arc, and rarely use either, although one or the other (which??) would surely be a better solution than my current habit of opening some links in new windows via right-click. My Easels and Media containers are empty - no real surprise there, since I prefer text to images is general. And I never Boost anything. Again, no surprise. Seems like a gimmick with a lot of potential to cause unexpected problems. Does anybody here love Boosts?
Re the new AI features, I’ve turned off “Ask on Page” since I’m already in the habit of using Bing Search when I have a specific question that can’t be easily converted to a Google search. I’ve also turned off ChatGPT due to uneasiness about how that system would use my data and what it might do with it.
With both Peek and Little Arc, the idea is that it’s a quick way to look at a page without going to the effort of putting into a tab that will stick around for at least some time. I use both heavily because I do a lot of checking of something and then returning to what I was working on.
I’m pretty sure that when I click a link in email or an app to open a web page, it’s opening in Little Arc. You may be using Little Arc more often than you think. 
I believe that’s Peek. Little Arc has a kind of light tool bar. Sometimes clicking a link replaces the current page, and sometimes Peek opens. If there’s a rhyme or reason to it, I don’t know what it is. Shift-click and Command-click do different things that I can’t keep track of, either.
It could very well be. This is where Arc gets a little confusing for me. Judging by the weekly release notes there’s so much ferment in their development process that it feels like they have three different variations on a browser all under the same roof.
It’s exciting, of course. But hard to keep track of which variation I’m using or why I should care.
They should be easy to distinguish because Little Arc is a standalone window. Peek is an overlay on top of the current Arc window. From my original article:
Little Arc
Peek
As far as clicks go, that’s where things can get confusing because there are preferences that adjust the behavior.
So of course I had to check this out at my next opportunity.
Here is a link in email:
It opens to this page in Arc:
And the Window menu reveals:
What I see in the toolbar for that window is a drop-down menu at right to open the link in “big” Arc in a particular Space:
So…my working theory on the paradigm for Little Arc is that it opens a free-standing window that is not associated with any particular Space. But like other aspects of Arc, it gives the user a strong pathway to capture the link in an established Space.
Thanks to @ace 's explanation below, I’m going to be on the lookout for actual Peek windows because I can’t consciously recall seeing one.
Scrolling back to the start of this discussion and clicking on the link to Adams’ article in Tidbits, I get a Peek window.
That’s exactly correct.
And as @paal says below, a link to any other site will open in a Peek by default (unless you’ve changed the settings I showed a few posts up). Here’s a nice article that explains the real-world analogy for Peeks.
https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/arc-browsers-peek-simplified-way-of-interacting-with-tabs-6d1a17d4dab1
That article grounds me in what’s happening with a Peek. I realize now I’ve been using them without knowing what would happen once I closed them. Inevitably I’ve been a bit surprised and definitely grateful that I end up in the source page where I found that link.
Safari is looking more and more quaint.
I’m curious, Adam, if you are still a big Arc fan and use it daily. I get email from them about upgrades, and I have it installed on my MBP, but I never use it and fall back on Chrome, Firefox, and sometime Safari for testing.
Is Arc free?
What do you currently like best about it?
Oh goodness, yes. Arc has made more of a difference in my everyday computing than any app in at least a decade. And yes, it’s free.
Everything I need is right at my fingertips as pinned tabs in my sidebar workspaces, and I can switch back and forth between pages with Control-Tab extremely quickly.
Before I saw this, I was working on defining a new trail running course, which required me to have tabs open for the official PDF trail map, the OnTheGoMap mapping service, and the RunGo service that I used for a previous route on these trails. I also have tabs open for three other pages that have leaderboard statistics for previous years’ courses so I can check popularity and a Google Sheets document where I’m listing out this year’s courses. So for just what I’m working on right now, I’m flipping back and forth among seven tabs, which would be far, far more difficult in a traditional browser with top-mounted ephemeral tabs. Safari’s tab groups are as close as you get to something like this in a major browser; Vivaldi is the closest alternative among new browsers.
But Arc is simply better, and it’s being improved and refined on a weekly basis. I find other browsers just unusable for anything more than an occasional test page now.
My main browser used to be Firefox until I switched to Arc and I never looked back. I almost never use Firefox any longer. Sometimes, you have to think outside the box and Arc is a good example of it.
I’ll give it another try. I make great use of Chrome tab groups though, and find them very useful. Why do you say Safari’s tab groups are different, and what’s different about Arc’s?