Arc Browser Is Shutting Down on December 22: Full Timeline

The Browser Company announced on October 22, 2026, that it is sunsetting Arc, the tab-and-sidebar browser it spent years building a devoted following around, in favor of Dia, the company's AI-centric browser launched for macOS and Windows earlier this year. The announcement, posted on the company's official blog under the headline "A farewell to Arc," lays out a staged shutdown running through December 22, 2026, after which Arc will stop working on desktop and its servers will no longer serve logged-in accounts.

For a browser that built one of the most loyal (and vocal) fan bases in recent memory with features like the Sidebar, Spaces and Split View, the news is a significant moment for anyone who switched their daily browsing to Arc. Here's exactly what The Browser Company said, the full shutdown timeline, what happens to your bookmarks and passwords, and what to do right now if you're an Arc user.

A quick refresher on Arc

Arc is the flagship product of The Browser Company of New York, the startup behind both Arc and Dia, led by CEO and co-founder Josh Miller. Arc set out to rethink the basic metaphors of browsing rather than ship another Chromium-based skin: it moved tabs into a vertical sidebar, grouped them into color-coded "Spaces" for different parts of a person's life or job, and added a built-in "Split View" for viewing two pages side by side. It won a cult following among designers, developers and people who simply had too many tabs open, and was frequently cited as one of the more genuinely novel pieces of browser software released in years. That history is part of why the shutdown announcement landed hard with its user base — Arc wasn't a neglected side project, it was the product that put The Browser Company on the map in the first place, and the company had already said in 2025 that active feature development on Arc had stopped in favor of Dia, before confirming this full sunset.

What The Browser Company announced

In a letter posted to arc.net/blog and signed by co-founder Josh Miller and "everyone at The Browser Company of New York," the company said plainly: "We've decided to sunset Arc on December 22, 2026." The letter frames the decision as a shift of the company's full attention toward Dia, which it describes as keeping the Arc features people relied on, including the Sidebar, Profiles (the renamed version of Spaces), Pinned Tabs, Folders (now called Tab Groups) and Split View, while building in AI assistance as a core, optional layer rather than a bolted-on feature.

The company says Arc will keep "working as usual" and receive "basic updates" on macOS and Windows right up until the December 22 shutdown date, so this is not an immediate kill-switch. It is, however, a firm end date, and the staged rollback of features begins well before then.

The exact shutdown timeline

The Browser Company broke the wind-down into three dated milestones. Each one removes a different layer of functionality, so it's worth knowing exactly which date affects which platform.

Between now and December 22, Arc on desktop keeps functioning normally, so there is no need to panic-migrate today. But every milestone on that table removes something, and the mobile AI features go dark first, roughly a month before the desktop apps stop working at all.

What happens to your data

This is the part most Arc users will care about most. According to the announcement, Arc accounts are deactivated on December 22, 2026, and any personal data tied to those accounts is deleted within 30 days after deactivation. If you also have a Dia account, only the data linked specifically to your Arc account is affected by that deletion — your Dia data is separate.

The company's letter is explicit on the deadline that matters: after December 22, 2026, Arc "can no longer identify or retrieve user data" for data requests. In plain terms, once the shutdown date passes, there is no support channel that can pull your synced tabs, Spaces, history or saved logins back out for you. If you want to keep anything, you need to export it or move it into Dia before that date, not after.

How to export Arc data or move to Dia

The Browser Company published specific steps for exporting data on every platform, and a parallel import flow into Dia. The export option was added to Arc as part of the October 22 update, so make sure your Arc is up to date before trying this.

• macOS: Arc menu > Settings > Advanced > Export Data.
• Windows: Open Settings (Ctrl+, or via the Arc menu), then under Advanced, select "Export Data" next to "Export Spaces and tabs."
• iOS (Arc Search): Tab Switcher > Settings > Export Data.
• Android (Arc Search): Tab Switcher > Settings > Storage > Export data.

To bring that data into Dia, the company built a dedicated importer: on macOS, open Dia and choose "Import from Another Browser"; on Windows, use the Dia app menu's "Import from another browser" option. The company says passwords, extensions, browsing history, open tabs, Profiles, Folders and bookmarks all transfer through this importer, which should cover most of what a daily Arc user has built up over time.

If you'd rather not move to Dia at all, the export files are a standard way to carry your bookmarks and history into Chrome, Safari, Firefox or any other browser instead — just do it before December 22.

What is Dia, and why the pivot

Dia is The Browser Company's other browser, free for macOS and Windows, and the company's new flagship. Its own marketing describes it as "the browser for better days at work," and it leans heavily into AI features built around a person's actual workflow rather than general-purpose search. According to Dia's website, it includes a "Morning Brief" that summarizes a user's calendar, inbox and key links before the workday starts, cross-tool synthesis that pulls information from apps like Slack, Notion and Teams into reports, "Live Work" tab-bar shortcuts into specific GitHub pull requests or Notion docs, meeting prep that opens an agenda and related documents ahead of a call, and split-screen layouts that can turn gathered context directly into slides.

Dia also carries over the interface ideas Arc users will recognize: Profiles replace Spaces, Tab Groups replace Folders, and Split View returns largely unchanged. The company states that Dia's AI features are optional and that sync is end-to-end encrypted, with a privacy page asserting that data isn't sold or used for ad profiling. There's also a "Dia for Work" tier aimed at teams, with single sign-on and admin controls.

The Browser Company's own framing in the farewell letter is that sunsetting Arc lets the team focus its engineering and security resources on one product instead of two. Arc was an ambitious, UI-heavy browser that asked a lot of its own codebase; concentrating on Dia means one browser to secure, update and build AI features into, rather than maintaining two in parallel.

Arc vs. Dia: what actually carries over

For anyone deciding whether to move to Dia specifically, rather than switching away from The Browser Company altogether, it helps to see which signature Arc concepts map onto Dia and which don't quite:

What's missing from Dia today is a mobile app with the same feature depth as Arc Search — Dia is currently a macOS and Windows browser, and Arc Search on iOS/Android is being reduced to a "lite browser" after November 23 rather than replaced one-to-one with a mobile Dia.

What Arc users should do right now

Given the dates above, the practical to-do list for current Arc users is short but time-sensitive:

1. Update Arc to the latest version so the export option is available.
2. Export your data (bookmarks, history, Spaces/tabs) using the steps for your platform, even if you haven't decided where you're going next.
3. If you're moving to Dia, use its built-in importer rather than a manual bookmark file, since it also carries over passwords, extensions and Profiles.
4. If you use Arc Search on mobile, know that AI features and sign-in stop on November 23, 2026 — well before the desktop shutdown.
5. Do this before December 22, 2026. After that date, The Browser Company says it cannot retrieve account data at all.

Developers and teams who built workflows around Arc's browser-as-a-platform features — including anything relying on WebAssembly-based extensions or tooling inside the browser — should treat this the same way they'd treat any end-of-life announcement for infrastructure they depend on: back up data first, test the replacement second, decommission last.

Why this matters beyond Arc's user base

Arc was, for several years, one of the few browsers that genuinely tried to rethink the basic metaphors of tabs and navigation, and it earned a passionate community for doing so. Its shutdown is a reminder of a pattern now common across the software industry: companies that built distinctive, well-loved products are increasingly reallocating resources toward AI-first rebuilds, sometimes at the direct expense of the original product. It's a similar dynamic to what's played out with other tools getting AI-driven overhauls or deprecations, such as recent model deprecations in developer tools or the broader push to bolt AI assistants onto existing software categories, discussed in pieces like our look at how coding tools are extending themselves with new plugin systems.

Whether Dia can earn the same loyalty Arc did remains to be seen — early reception has focused on its productivity and AI framing rather than the playful, opinionated interface design that made Arc stand out. For now, the clock that matters most is the one on the calendar: December 22, 2026.

What happens next

Watch for three dates. October 22, 2026 has already passed — no new Arc accounts. November 23, 2026 cuts mobile AI features and sign-in. December 22, 2026 is the hard stop: Arc goes dark on macOS and Windows, accounts deactivate, and the 30-day data deletion window begins. Support through the Arc Help Center remains available until the shutdown date; after that, Dia users can get help from inside the Dia app. If you haven't exported your Arc data yet, that's the one action item with a real deadline attached to it.

Written byFelix Moreau

Felix Moreau writes Pandromeda's software coverage and how-to guides. He covers Windows, macOS and Linux updates, the apps people rely on, emulators and developer tools, and turns official documentation into clear, numbered steps that work on the current version.

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