Arc Browser vs Chrome After December 22 (2026)

By Kshetez Vinayak, founder of SupaSidebar. Last updated November 4, 2026.

TL;DR

Chrome is the safest browser to switch to once Arc stops working on December 22, 2026, because it runs the same Chromium engine and the same Chrome Web Store extensions as Arc, and it keeps getting updates. To keep Arc's sidebar and Spaces next to Chrome, add SupaSidebar, a Mac app that sits beside the browser with no extension, so it works even with a Chrome your company manages. Chrome already covers vertical tabs, tab groups, profiles and tab search on its own. It still lacks Spaces in one window, a sidebar of pinned tabs that stays put, Little Arc, the Command Bar and Boosts. The table below gives one get-it-back fix for each, and Boosts is the only one nothing fully replaces.

Quick navigation

• Ready to move your Arc Spaces and bookmarks into Chrome? → How to Move Arc to Chrome Before December 22
• Only wondering whether Chrome's vertical tabs are enough? → Chrome Vertical Tabs vs Arc Sidebar (2026)
• Stuck on a work Chrome that blocks extensions? → How to Keep Arc's Sidebar When Work Makes You Use Chrome
• Not sure Chrome is the right pick at all? → The complete Arc alternatives guide
• Weighing Arc against Chrome feature by feature? You are in the right place. Keep reading.

Arc vs Chrome feature by feature, with a fix for every gap

Five of the seven Arc features above come back through SupaSidebar running beside Chrome, and Chrome now covers Split View by itself. Boosts is the honest loss. A user-styles extension brings back custom CSS, but Arc's JavaScript Boosts and its one-click Zap tool have no clean replacement in Chrome.

Why Chrome is the browser to keep after Arc

Chrome is the lowest-risk landing spot for an Arc user, because Arc was built on Chromium. Pages render the same, Arc's extensions came from the Chrome Web Store, and Chrome keeps shipping updates after Arc goes dark. Wikipedia's Arc entry notes Arc "is based on Chromium" and supports Chrome extensions.

Arc's end date is fixed. Per The Browser Company's sunset notice on arc.net, Arc for macOS and Windows stops working on December 22, 2026, sign-in ends, and every Arc account is deactivated that day, with personal data deleted within 30 days. New Arc accounts stopped on October 22, 2026. Until the shutdown, Arc receives only "basic updates", and TechCrunch's report on the sunset notes the company's security work now centers on Dia. The full timeline is in Is Arc Browser Dead?.

Chrome also closed a lot of the gap in 2026. Google announced vertical tabs on April 7, 2026, after the feature first appeared behind a flag in Chrome 146 in March, per Ubuntu Handbook's Chrome 146 report. Chrome's tab help page lists the rest. On a Mac, View > Show Tabs Vertically moves the tab strip to the left. Tab groups save and sync on their own, and a closed group waits on the bookmarks bar. Tab Search (⌘⇧A) finds any open tab by keyword.

Split view arrived even earlier, putting two tabs side by side in one window, per MacRumors on February 19, 2026. Profiles keep "bookmarks, history, passwords, and other settings" separate, per Chrome's profiles help page. For someone who used Arc mostly as a tall tab list, that is enough, and the setup takes a minute with the guide to vertical tabs in Chrome on Mac. Arc users who relied on Spaces and saved links need more than Chrome ships, which is the layer SupaSidebar adds beside the browser.

Five Arc habits Chrome still can't do

Chrome's 2026 additions are about the tabs open right now. Arc was a workspace that remembered things. Arc users who tried Chrome's version noticed the gap fast. "It is so badly implemented that I switched back to horizontal tabs right after a couple of days," one wrote in an October 23, 2026 r/ArcBrowser thread. Another in the same thread put it more narrowly. "My biggest issue with chrome is that I can't CMD+S to hide the sidebar."

Spaces that switch inside one window

Arc's Spaces held separate sets of tabs, each with its own theme and, optionally, its own browser profile, and a swipe moved between them in the same window. Chrome's nearest match is a profile, which opens in its own window, or a tab group, which lives in one window's tab strip. Work and Personal end up as two Chrome windows to find and arrange. SupaSidebar rebuilds this habit beside Chrome by linking each of its Spaces to a Chrome profile.

A sidebar of pinned tabs that stays put

Arc's pinned tabs lived in the sidebar like bookmarks and stayed there after you closed them. Chrome's pinned tabs only show the site's icon and belong to a single window, and the vertical tab list shows only what is open. Close a tab in Chrome and it leaves the list.

Little Arc for links from other apps

A link clicked in Slack or Mail opened in Little Arc, a small floating window you read and dismissed without touching your main tabs. With Chrome as the default browser, every such link opens as a full tab in whichever Chrome window was last in front.

The Command Bar

Arc's ⌘T opened the Command Bar, a Spotlight-style box that searched sites and history and could pin or duplicate tabs, per Wikipedia's description. Chrome splits that job in two. The address bar searches history and bookmarks, and Tab Search covers open tabs. Neither sees tabs in another browser. Every way to get ⌘T back is compared in Arc Command Bar Alternative for Safari and Chrome.

Boosts

Boosts let Arc users rewrite any website with their own CSS, HTML and JavaScript, and a later Zap control removed page sections with a click, per Wikipedia. Chrome has nothing built in. The Stylus extension restyles sites with CSS, which covers the look of a Boost but not its scripts.

Why Chrome extensions don't fully close the gap

Every gap above has the same shape. Chrome holds the tabs, but nothing holds the workspace around them, the saved links, the contexts and the one search box. Arc-style Chrome extensions try to add that layer, but they live inside Chrome only, and a company that manages Chrome can switch every extension off with a single policy.

How to keep Arc's sidebar and Spaces next to Chrome

SupaSidebar is a Mac app that puts Arc's sidebar and Spaces next to Chrome without installing anything inside Chrome. It holds pinned sites, saved links and Chrome's open tabs in one sidebar attached to the Chrome window, so the Arc layout comes back while Chrome stays the browser that does the browsing.

SupaSidebar reads Chrome's tabs through macOS Automation rather than a browser extension, so Chrome's extension blocklist never applies to it. On a company-managed Mac two conditions remain. The Mac has to allow installing standalone apps, and you have to be able to grant the Automation permission. The guide to keeping Arc's sidebar on a work Chrome covers how to check both.

One shortcut, ⌘⇧Space by default, shows or hides the whole sidebar from any app, the way ⌘S hid Arc's, and it can be changed in Preferences.

Here is a typical SupaSidebar setup for an Arc user who moves to Chrome for work and keeps Safari for reading.

Switching Spaces swaps the pinned sites, the saved links and the open-tab list in one shortcut, and each link opens in the right Chrome profile or in Safari without hunting for a window. One former Arc user on r/diabrowser described SupaSidebar as "an app someone made to basically be the Arc sidebar feature, except for any browser," in a June 2026 thread about what replaced Arc for them.

SupaSidebar has real limits next to Arc. It does not bring back Boosts or Easels. Its Spaces organize links and tabs but do not isolate cookies or sign-ins, so Chrome profiles still do that job. SupaView for links from other apps and Archived Tabs, the auto-close that mirrors Arc's archive, are Labs features that are still early. SupaSidebar runs only on macOS 14 or later, and it leaves Chrome's own tab strip in place.

Arc vs Chrome RAM usage: the engine is the same

Arc and Chrome use roughly the same memory per tab, because both run Google's Chromium engine. The research for this post found no independent lab benchmark of Arc vs Chrome RAM usage on a Mac, and the personal tests posted online disagree in both direction and size, so treat any single number with care.

The real difference is how many tabs stay alive. Arc moved tabs left untouched for 12 hours into its Archive by default, per Arc's 2021 release notes, so a long day ended with fewer live tabs. Chrome keeps every tab until you close it.

Chrome's answer is Memory Saver, under Settings > Performance. It deactivates tabs you are not using and reloads them when you come back, with Moderate, Balanced and Maximum levels, per Chrome's Memory Saver help page. Turn it on and most of the RAM gap with Arc closes. The tab strip still grows, though, because a sleeping tab is still a tab. For Arc's close-and-archive habit itself, SupaSidebar's Archived Tabs, a Labs feature, closes tabs you stop using in Chrome, Safari and other browsers and keeps them for 30 days, per the Archived Tabs docs.

Which Arc vs Chrome setup should you pick?

• If you used Arc mostly as a vertical tab list, Chrome alone is enough. Turn on vertical tabs and Memory Saver.
• If Spaces were the reason you used Arc, keep Chrome and add SupaSidebar, with one Space per Chrome profile.
• If your company manages Chrome, skip extensions and use SupaSidebar, which installs nothing inside Chrome, as long as the Mac allows standalone apps.
• If you lived in Boosts, expect a partial fix. Stylus covers CSS restyles, and JavaScript Boosts have no clean replacement.
• If Chrome itself is not settled, compare every option in the complete Arc alternatives guide.

Conclusion: Arc vs Chrome in 2026

Chrome wins the Arc vs Chrome question on the browser itself. It runs the same Chromium engine and extensions, it keeps getting updates after December 22, 2026, and it now has vertical tabs, saved tab groups, profiles, Tab Search and split view. Arc wins on the workspace, and that part does not come back from Chrome alone.

Chrome-only users who treated Arc as a tab list can switch today and lose little, especially with Memory Saver on. Arc users who lived in Spaces lose the most, because Chrome's closest match is a separate window per profile. People on a company-managed Chrome are the most boxed in, since the extension route is often blocked, and a standalone Mac app is the one Arc-style option that installs nothing in the browser. Boosts users should plan on a CSS-only replacement.

The practical move is to switch the browser and keep the workspace. Use Chrome for browsing, put Arc's sidebar and Spaces beside it, and import your Arc setup before December 22. To keep Arc's sidebar next to Chrome, try SupaSidebar (free version available).

Why we recommend SupaSidebar

SupaSidebar is a macOS app that brings Arc's sidebar to every browser - one sidebar for tabs, bookmarks, files, and apps across 32+ browsers including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Dia, Helium and Orion. For Arc users moving to Chrome, it imports Arc's Spaces and pinned tabs, attaches them to the Chrome window, and opens each Space's links in the matching Chrome profile, all without a Chrome extension.

FAQ

Is Chrome better than Arc?

As a browser after December 22, 2026, yes. Arc stops working that day, while Chrome runs the same Chromium engine and extensions and keeps getting updates. Chrome still lacks Arc's Spaces in one window, its pinned-tab sidebar, Little Arc, the Command Bar and Boosts, so Arc users usually add a sidebar app such as SupaSidebar to get the workspace back.

Does Chrome have Spaces like Arc?

No. Chrome's closest equivalents are profiles, which keep bookmarks, history and passwords separate but open in their own windows, and tab groups, which live inside one window. SupaSidebar adds Arc-style Spaces beside Chrome and can link each Space to a Chrome profile.

Does Arc use less RAM than Chrome?

Not meaningfully per tab, since both run the Chromium engine, and no independent lab benchmark settles it. Arc often felt lighter because it archived tabs left untouched for 12 hours by default. Chrome's Memory Saver, under Settings > Performance, deactivates idle tabs and closes most of that gap.

Is there a Little Arc for Chrome?

Chrome has no built-in Little Arc. SupaSidebar's SupaView, a floating mini browser, can open links from Slack, Mail or Terminal in a small window when SupaSidebar is set as the default browser. That option is currently a Labs feature in SupaSidebar.

Will Arc still work after December 22, 2026?

No. Arc for macOS and Windows stops working on December 22, 2026, sign-in ends, and all Arc accounts are deactivated that day, with personal data deleted within 30 days. Move Arc's Spaces and pinned tabs to their new home before then.

Can I keep Arc's sidebar in Chrome without an extension?

Yes, with a standalone Mac app. SupaSidebar shows Arc's sidebar, Spaces and Chrome's open tabs beside the Chrome window and installs nothing inside Chrome, so an extension blocklist does not affect it. On a managed Mac, the company still has to allow installing apps and granting the Automation permission.

By Kshetez Vinayak, founder of SupaSidebar. Last updated November 4, 2026.