The Browser Company Sets December 22 Shutdown for Arc and Points Users to Dia, Citing Security Costs

The announcement ends a long wind‑down. The Browser Company said in May 2025 that Arc's development would end, but it did not give a shutdown date at the time. According to The Verge, the company stopped building new Arc features in 2025 but kept maintaining the browser while it developed Dia. Chief executive Josh Miller said then that Arc had not been as popular as the company had hoped and was "simply too different" without giving users enough reasons to switch.

The company says users can move to Dia with little loss of data. Passwords, bookmarks, extensions and history come over automatically. Spaces, Folders and Tab Groups are available in Dia and import with a user's data intact. Spaces are now called Profiles in Dia, and users can still switch between work and personal environments. Dia also supports vertical tabs in the sidebar, pinned tabs and Split View.

Arc features that users rely on are free in Dia, and the AI features are optional. The company says Dia now surpasses Arc in stability, speed and security benchmarks and, in an FAQ, describes it as a lot faster than Arc. Those comparisons are the company's own and were not independently verified.

Dia is more AI‑centric than Arc. Its optional features include context‑aware search, morning briefings that are generated automatically and weekly summaries. It is available on Apple Silicon Macs and on Windows 11 PCs.

The Browser Company said that maintaining two browsers was hard to justify, particularly from a security standpoint. Browsers need continual updates to keep up with new threats, and the company said that workload is growing in the age of AI.

The company also stated that the team that built Arc is the same team behind Dia, and that some of its most ambitious work is still ahead.

Reaction on social media was largely disappointed, according to TechCrunch, and many users renewed calls for the company to release Arc as open source. Miller had previously pointed out that Arc is built on the Arc Development Kit, a proprietary internal software development kit that also forms the core engine behind Dia. Open‑sourcing Arc would mean giving away Dia's intellectual property, he said, adding that the kit remains core to the company's value.

The Browser Company launched Arc as a browser with a different interface from mainstream rivals, organising tabs in a sidebar and grouping them into Spaces. Atlassian acquired the company for $610 million in 2025. At the time of the deal, the company acknowledged that early adopters loved Arc's novel interface but that a novelty tax and the complexity of the product limited mainstream adoption.

Dia launched last year as the company's second attempt at the desktop browser market.

Users have two months from the announcement. Those who want to keep their data should export it from the latest version of Arc or move directly to Dia before December 22. Arc Search users on mobile should expect the AI and sync features to end on November 23.

The Browser Company has published an FAQ for Arc users explaining the move to Dia.