AI Hits - Arc Search (browser) for Android
Arc browser now has an Android app - called Arc Search - that leans on AI-driven features to help it offer a better browsing experience. I’ve been using the Arc browser on my iMac for a year and a half now, and have never been tempted to switch away from it. I wrote a first impressions post on it back in April of 2023. Here’s a little slice from that:
Arc is a new web browser with a very fresh approach to what a web browser should be and offer - at least in terms of what I have seen and experienced. Here are a few things that make Arc interesting and useful in my view:
It’s a possible cure for our tabs mania. The habit some (many?) of us have of constantly having a crazy number of tabs open at once - 10 open tabs, 15, in my case often 25 or more. This can often lead to feelings of stress or pressure; feeling I should have got back to those, should have finished reading or viewing their content.
Tabs - and folders to organize tabs in - still exist in Arc, but they live in the left sidebar. This may not seem like a major paradigm shift, but it just feels like much less of a distraction, less of a stresser.
The hierarchy or structure of Arc is also appealing to me. It is:
Spaces - a browser equivalent of Mac desktops, or tabs in Windows 10/11
Pinned favorites/most visited sites at the top of the sidebar
Pinned tabs
Current or Today’s tabs
As with most things I enjoy using on the Mac, I’m happy to see an Android version available for Arc. First impressions are good too, it’s been my default browser for a few days now and it’s a very good experience so far. It does ‘new school search’, which I would define as:
Summarize the results and answer/address the search query first - don’t make us scroll through sponsored results
Offer more actionable results
Cite sources cleanly
with good summaries that directly address the search query, rather than leading with links to work through, with sources listed at the bottom of the results so we can check and evaluate them.
Here’s a recent search result from it (cropped as full results require scrolling):
Further details are just a single swipe scroll away:
I like little touches in the Arc desktop browser, and the same goes with Arc Search on Android - like showing the web pages it’s reading, scrolling like movie credits, right after asking it to “browse for me”:
The Sources listing is good looking and there’s a neat little ‘G’ button to click if you want further results from Google - old school search a tap away when it’s wanted:
The cards view to switch between tabs is also pretty and nice to use:
Just like on desktop, we now have a growing number of useful browsers that use new school search. Soon it may be tough to think of reasons to use an old school browser more often than a new school option (or at all).