The company behind the new Arc browser, dubbed The Browser Company, announced it was finally bringing Arc to Windows. Sort of.
Arc for Windows is launching in beta, and the company said it was onboarding the first set of beta users starting today, with plans to bring on more users throughout the month and “rapidly” increase invites in January, per TechCrunch.
The Arc browser has been the subject of significant media coverage over the last year thanks in part to its flashy features and new approach to typical browser features like tabs.
I’m so proud of this team! Big day today as our first Windows beta invites go out.
It's also a big day for the Swift on Windows! Arc on Windows is built in Swift, and shares a majority of its code with macOS. Our codebase is also now cross-platform, making future ports easier! https://t.co/AOApLRMKiE
— Hursh Agrawal (@hursh) December 11, 2023
However, Arc has so far been exclusive to Mac, leaving Windows users waiting eagerly for the inevitable Windows client launch. It seems that the time is here, finally, though the wait will likely be a little longer as The Browser Company slowly sends out beta invites.
Interestingly, The Browser Company built Arc in Swift, a programming language developed by Apple and the open-source community. However, Swift doesn’t have a user interface (UI) framework for Windows, so The Browser Company built a language projection tool to create Swift language bindings for WinRT — those interested can read more about that here. The company says it’s open-sourcing the tool so other people can build Windows apps with Swift.
Today we crossed 500k signups for Arc on Windows 🎉
— Josh Miller (@joshm) September 12, 2023
Beyond that, The Browser Company has been hard at work pushing out new features for Arc this year. That includes launching an iPhone companion app (no word on an Android app yet), a tool to customize web pages, AI-powered features, and more.
It’s not clear if the Arc for Windows browser will have feature parity with the Mac version, but a tweet from The Browser Company cofounder Hursh Agrawal said the Windows version “shares a majority of its code with macOS” and that the codebase is “now cross-platform, making future ports easier,” which bodes well for feature parity in the future.
You can learn more or sign up for the Arc for Windows beta here.
Source: TechCrunch
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