Arc Browser Shuts Down on December 22, 2026, With Dia as Its Successor
Arc has announced it will sunset the Arc browser on December 22, 2026. Dia, from the team that built Arc, will replace it as the company's new browser. The announcement, published on Arc's website, sets out a staged shutdown. The mobile AI features are switched off a month before the desktop applications stop working.
The schedule runs in four steps. As of October 22, 2026, new Arc accounts can no longer be created. On November 23, Browse for Me and other AI features will be disabled on iOS and Android. On December 22, Arc for macOS and Windows stops working, and accounts are deactivated on the same date. Personal data will be deleted within 30 days.
The shutdown follows an earlier decision about the product's direction. The Verge reported that The Browser Company had stopped active development of Arc, limiting future updates to security and bug fixes. The company also said Arc would not be going away despite the end of feature work. The sunset announcement now places a firm end date on that position.
The Windows client continued to receive maintenance in the interim. Arc for Windows received an update that upgraded its Chromium engine to version 143.0.7499.194, with security and stability improvements, according to the Arc for Windows release notes. Chromium is the open-source engine that renders web pages, and Arc is built on top of it.
In my view, the sequencing deserves more attention than the headline date. Closing account creation first, then disabling the AI features on mobile, then retiring the desktop clients gives users a multi-week window to see where their browsing data and workflows actually live. Users who depend on Arc across macOS, Windows, iOS and Android will need to plan for four different cutoffs rather than one. The 30-day deletion period after deactivation sets a hard limit on how long any data can be recovered.
The broader context here is the usual one for browser products built on Chromium. The engine itself continues to be maintained upstream, so the sunset concerns the Arc application, its account system and its feature set, not the rendering layer underneath. Developers who work with Chromium-based tooling will recognise that the engine's security cadence is not the constraint that matters to this product's users.
The announcement names a successor. Dia is positioned as the next browser from the same team, so the people who designed Arc's sidebar-driven workflow and its AI features are building what comes next. The announcement does not address whether Dia inherits Arc's user base, or on what terms. What is clear is that the next several weeks are the window for anyone who wants to move data, retire devices or evaluate the replacement before December 22.
