Moving from Arc

Moving from Arc to Ardia: Keep the sidebar.

Arc stops opening on December 22, 2026. Ardia is a free, open-source Arc alternative for Mac: Arc’s sidebar on real Chromium, and it imports your spaces, pinned tabs, folders and themes in one go.

Download for MacSend to my MacApple Silicon Try the sidebar first

macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple Silicon · Notarized by Apple

What comes over

Spaces: The first space you pick fills the profile you import into. Each other one becomes its own profile, with its name and colour. Every space keeps its theme.
Pinned tabs: Pinned rows in that profile, with the names you gave them.
Pinned folders: Pinned groups. Folders inside folders stay nested.
Favorites: Tiles at the top of the sidebar.
Open tabs: An “Imported” group. Tabs already open in Ardia, and internal pages like arc://, are skipped.
Bookmarks, history, passwords, cookies: Into the first profile, so you’re still signed in there.
Extensions: Listed after the import, so you can add them back from the Chrome Web Store.

What feels the same

The sidebar

Pinned tabs, groups and today’s tabs down the side, in Arc’s layout. Hide it when you want the whole screen.

Split view, Peek, Little Arc

Up to three pages side by side. ⇧-click a link to peek at it. ⌥⌘N opens a Little Ardia window.

The command bar

⌘T and ⌘L open one box for tabs, history, settings and search.

Themes

Arc’s gradient themes, grain included. Settings › Profiles › Theme › Import from Arc… brings one over on its own.

Real Chromium

Sites and Chrome extensions just work. uBlock Origin is built in.

Ships most weeks

Open source under GPL-3.0. The release notes say what changed.

What doesn’t

Boosts and Easels. There’s no Boosts editor and no Easels.
Arc Max. Ardia has no AI, on purpose.
Windows and Intel Macs. Ardia needs Apple Silicon and macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

How to switch

Download Ardia and drag it into Applications.
Keep Arc installed. In Ardia, open Ardia › Import from Another Browser… and pick Arc.
Pick the spaces to bring. macOS asks once to unlock Arc’s saved passwords, so they and your cookies come too.
Make Ardia your default browser in Settings › General.

Arc’s last weeks

October 22: No new Arc accounts.
November 23: Arc Search on phones loses sign-in and sync.
December 22: Arc stops opening on Mac and Windows. Accounts are deactivated, their data deleted within 30 days.

Import while Arc still works. After December 22 there’s no Arc left to ask.

Why not Dia?

Arc points you to Dia, made by the same team. Dia is built around AI and runs on Windows too. Ardia dresses like Dia, keeps Arc’s sidebar, and leaves the AI out. Both import from Arc, so try both.

Same engine as Chrome