You need to mouse over the URL bar and click on the details button, and the app displays a pop-up that tells you whether the site is secure.
Well, Arc is doing that already, but not directly on the address bar. The Mountain View company is replacing the padlock icon with a details button in September 2023. A couple of months ago Google said that users were being misled by the icon as they believed it represented a website's trustworthiness. When you visit a web page, you would normally look for a padlock icon to understand whether the current web page is secure or not. Google is the default search engine in the browser, you can change this from the app's settings. The important thing here is that Arc supports Chrome extensions, so you can install your favorite add-ons right away. This was quite annoying, but I created an account using an email alias to jump over this hurdle.Īrc browser is based on Chromium, so it comes with its pros and cons. You cannot do anything without signing in, it doesn't even let you maximize the app's window or access the settings. You need to sign up for an Arc account to use the browser. Please treat this article as an overview of the features, not as a full review.
Arc has been in development for 3 years, and until now the only way to access it was via a waitlist, aka a closed invite system.
