Ardia’s engine now starts from Helium’s privacy patches instead of ungoogled-chromium’s, on the same Chromium 155. Your profiles, tabs, passwords, cookies, extensions and uBlock Origin filters carry over as they are. Around it, a long list of Arc’s habits arrived, most of them behind a switch.
New
- A new engine under the same Chromium 155. Ardia’s engine is now built on Helium’s patches, by the Helium authors. A few defaults change with it: Secure DNS switches on by itself when your DNS provider offers it, a site that only works over plain HTTP asks before it loads, and canvas, audio and CPU-core readouts get a little noise so they’re harder to use for fingerprinting. Ardia is now free software under the GPL-3.0; About Ardia links this version’s source.
- Search for any setting. A field at the top of the Settings sidebar finds a setting by its name, its description or a common word for it (“cookies”, “dark”, “pip”), and forgives a typo. ⌘F jumps to it, and Return opens the pane with the setting scrolled into view and highlighted.
- Peek at a link before you open it. Shift-click a link (or Option-click, set in Settings › Tabs) and its page opens in a small Little Ardia window over the one you’re on. ⌘O or a two-finger spread opens it as a tab; Esc, a pinch or a click outside closes it. A Peek isn’t saved, synced or kept in Recently Closed. Thanks, @extraes.
- Pinned folders, in the sidebar and on top. Hold a pinned tile over another to make a folder, or pick New Folder with Tab from its menu. Groups can hold groups, Arc’s folders import as them, and pinned groups and nested folders show in the top tab strip too. Thanks, @YishenTu.
- Arrange pinned tabs, groups and live folders in any order, and the order follows you to your other Macs. Thanks, @YishenTu.
- Group pinned tabs. Pinned rows have New Group with Tab and Move to Group, ⌃⌘N groups them, and dropping a tab on the middle of a pinned row makes a pinned group in its place.
- Tidy your pins. Next to Clear, Tidy closes duplicate pins, files loose ones into the folder of their site and makes a folder from two or more pins of one site. Undo puts everything back.
- Splits pin and group as one row. Pin a split, move it to a group or drag it into one, and both panes go together, in every window of the profile.
- Bangs in the command bar. Type “!gh react”, “react !w” or just “!yt” and Return goes straight to that site’s search, or to the site itself. The list is Helium’s (Kagi’s bangs plus imput’s), built in and refreshed at most once a day, never at launch. Start with “?” for a plain search.
- ⌘T lists your open tabs before you type, most recent first, when new tabs open the command bar. Type “split” or “move tab” for split view and profile actions.
- Group tabs by dragging with tabs on top. Drop a tab on the middle of another to make a group, or on a group to join it. A drop near the edge still reorders.
- Little Ardia can change profile. Pick one from the button in its bar, or open it in a profile from the File and Dock menus.
- Choose your Downloads folder in Settings › General, per profile, and whether to ask where to save each file.
- Picture in Picture goes to a corner when you throw it, as in Dia, and has ±10 s buttons; ← and → skip too.
- The app icon follows macOS’s dark, clear and tinted styles.
- As in Arc, if you want it, each behind a switch that’s off: ⌘Z reopens closed tabs, ⌘L opens in the middle of the window, Top Apps tiles grow with the sidebar instead of adding columns (thanks, @narasaka), and your tabs show in every window of the profile.
- The sidebar’s top row sits where Arc’s does. With the address bar in the sidebar, the window buttons and the URL field line up with Arc’s. The sidebar’s buttons take clicks only on their own plates; the rest of the row moves the window.
Fixed
- Saved passwords and cookies no longer vanish after a slow login. If the login keychain hadn’t shown Ardia its key yet when Ardia started, Ardia made a new key, and every saved password and cookie stopped opening. Now it makes a key only for a brand-new profile; otherwise it waits a few seconds, then asks. A key Ardia isn’t allowed to use, or a damaged one, gets Try Again instead of a quit.
- Typing an accent no longer crashes Ardia. On keyboards with dead keys, like Portuguese, typing ´ or ` in a tab name, the command bar or the find bar closed the app.
- The window moves when you drag it on macOS 27. Dragging a window by its toolbar, the top of the sidebar or the top tab strip left it where it was, because macOS 27 stopped honouring the way apps hand a drag to the system. Ardia now moves the window itself, and it keeps up with a fast drag. The top few points of the window also move it now, where before they only zoomed on a double-click.
- ⌘V and typing right after ⌘T, ⌘L or ⌘F land in the new field. A paste or the first letters typed just after opening a tab, the address bar or Find went into the old page.
- Escape and ⌘W give the page its focus back. Closing the command bar left nothing focused, so keys and ⌘V did nothing until you clicked the page.
- ⌘Z after closing the command bar no longer closes Ardia.
- ⌘W closes the tab with the find bar open. The first press used to close only the find bar. Esc still closes just the find bar.
- Next and previous tab work from DevTools and pages that grab keys. ⌃⇟, ⌃⇞, ⇧⌘], ⇧⌘[, ⌥⌘→ and ⌥⌘← switch tabs before the page or DevTools sees them, as in Chrome.
- A zoomed window fills itself. After a double-click on the window’s top edge or Window › Zoom, the sidebar and page could stay at their old size in the top-left corner.
- Windows keep their size after Zoom or tiling, and a new window opens at the last one’s size.
- Install and Relaunch works with a window in full screen, even on another Space.
- Dragging a tab in the auto-hidden sidebar reorders it. It used to make a split view every time, and the sidebar could slide away mid-drag. Drag it out over the page to split; Esc cancels.
- The floating sidebar stays out while the pointer is on the Dock and while you use its menus, a hover card, a rename or the icon picker; Site Controls opens beside it instead of behind it. Thanks, @narasaka.
- The speaker shows on tabs playing sound again, including YouTube videos that start slowly or in a background tab.
- The Picture in Picture button works on silent videos and pages with several videos again, and Pause always answers, even after the controls fade.
- 英数 and かな switch the input source again in the New Tab bar and every other field of Ardia’s own.
- New tabs no longer flash white in dark mode.
- Page translation is faster, and translating a page again, or a second tab, is nearly instant.
- Launch goes straight from the saved picture to the real window, without a dark moment in between, and the picture looks like the window it stands in for.
- The pinned tiles stay put while the tabs scroll, which now scroll under a thin line that fades in, as in Dia.
- Pinned tiles keep their 6 pt gaps after a drag, and the rows no longer jitter while you reorder. Thanks, @midverm.
- Little Ardia opens on the display you clicked the link on. Thanks, @0xJeu.
- The theme editor shows the theme you picked, in the window behind it and in its preview. Thanks, @hernan0078.
- Importing from Arc again adds nothing twice. It also brings your sidebar with a Little Arc open, GitHub and Bitbucket live folders come over as live folders, and profiles made from one Arc profile’s spaces share its data. Thanks, @YishenTu.
- The “Set Ardia as default browser” checkbox in onboarding can be clicked again. Thanks, @torztomasz.
- A shortcut you set wins over another action’s default on the same keys, so ⌘D can pin. ⌘↓ and ⌘↑ still move the caret in text fields when they’re bound to switching tabs.
- No more empty extra profiles after accepting an extension another app installed, and that extension no longer pops up a prompt.
- No more crash reports from Apple’s Passwords helper. Ardia no longer starts it; it only runs in browsers Apple recognises.
Smaller
- Settings panes appear finished, without toggles sliding to their values or lists popping in late.
- A Top Apps folder stays lit while you hold a tile over it, so the tile joins it.
- The ⌘T bar opens at its full width, without growing in.
- Cleaned tabs leave Recently Cleaned after a week, and the count beside New Tab shows only where it fits.
- A pull request’s hover card no longer overflows. Thanks, @0xJeu.
- Chrome’s “Close window with last tab: Never” flag works.
- ⇧⌘C in DevTools selects an element again instead of copying the page’s address.
- Peeking at a hidden sidebar shows no sliver of the page round its corners.
- A rare crash after two quick clicks on the same sidebar row is gone.