Arc browser shuts down Dec. 22 as Browser Company bets on Dia

The Browser Company is shutting down its Arc browser on December 22, 2026, and steering users toward Dia, its AI-first browser, the company said Thursday. It framed the move as a security trade-off: defending a browser has gotten far more demanding since AI entered the picture, and the company wants its engineering and security teams concentrated on Dia instead, which it says was designed from scratch to meet current security standards. The company has already stopped letting anyone create a new Arc account, effective Thursday, and the shutdown will unfold in stages.

Arc Search’s mobile apps on iOS and Android will shed their AI capabilities on November 23 — including the “Browse for Me” feature — and users won’t be able to log in or sync tabs anymore, though the app keeps working as a plain local browser. A month later, on December 22, Arc will stop functioning altogether on Mac and Windows: accounts will be deactivated and personal data erased within 30 days, while Arc Search disappears from the Google Play Store.

The Browser Company says Dia already beats Arc on speed, stability and security benchmarks, but reaction on social media has leaned toward disappointment, with many users renewing calls to open-source Arc. CEO Josh Miller has pushed back before, noting that Arc runs on the Arc Development Kit, a proprietary internal SDK that also powers Dia — so giving away Arc’s code would mean giving away Dia’s. “While we’d love to open-source Arc someday, we can’t do that meaningfully without also open-sourcing ADK,” he said. “And ADK is still core to our company’s value.”

Dia will carry over Arc’s core conveniences: “Profiles” replace Spaces for switching between environments, vertical tabs remain as an optional sidebar, and Folders are now “Pinned Tab Groups.” Passwords, bookmarks, extensions and history transfer automatically, and Arc’s features stay free in Dia with AI optional. The shutdown closes out a wind-down that effectively started in 2025, when The Browser Company — since acquired by Atlassian for $610 million — stopped building new Arc features, having concluded that Arc’s novel interface charmed early adopters but never turned into the mass-market Chrome alternative it once aimed to be.

Why it matters

The shutdown shows how costly browser security has become in the AI era, and it bets The Browser Company’s future entirely on an AI-first product at a moment when AI browsers are still earning users’ trust.