Arc is gone. Here is what actually replaces each part of it.

Arc was five separate things

Most "Arc alternative" lists fail because they treat Arc as one product. It was not. People miss different halves of it, and the right replacement depends entirely on which half you miss.

1. The vertical sidebar instead of a squashed horizontal tab strip.
2. Spaces: separate contexts you switch between.
3. Tabs that follow you into every window, so a new window is never empty.
4. Automatic tidying: tabs that archive themselves when you stop using them.
5. The look: themes, colour, the general feeling of not being in Chrome.

1. The vertical sidebar

This is the best-served category, and you have real choices. Extensions such as Leap, Side Space, Workona and several plain "vertical tabs" extensions put a searchable sidebar in Chrome. Vivaldi and Edge ship one natively, and Zen Browser is built around it.

If the sidebar is the thing you miss, install one of those. We do not make one and are not going to pretend otherwise.

2. Spaces

Workona and Toby are the mature options, both built around saved workspaces you switch between, both with accounts and cloud sync. Leap does a lighter version inside its sidebar. Chrome's own tab groups cover a surprising amount of this if you name and colour them, and they cost nothing.

The trade is account-and-cloud versus local-and-simple. If you want your spaces on three machines, take the cloud one. If you do not, tab groups plus something to keep them consistent gets close.

3. Tabs that follow you into every window

This is the one almost nothing replaces, and it is the reason we built something.

Every browser treats a window as an island. You open a second window for a second monitor, and from that second onward the two drift apart until the tab you want is always in the other one. In Arc, opening a window gave you your space, already populated.

Chrome sync does not do this. It copies tabs between devices, not between two windows on the same machine. Sidebar extensions do not do it either: they change how one window is displayed, not what the other window contains. Workspace managers get closest, but they ask you to save and restore a workspace deliberately rather than keeping windows identical as you work.

Tabtwinsy is the piece we built for this. It mirrors your tabs and tab groups across every window continuously: add a tab anywhere and it appears everywhere, close it anywhere and it closes everywhere, open a brand new window and it arrives already populated. It is free, has no account, and makes no network requests.

It is deliberately narrow. It is not a sidebar, it is not cross-device sync, and it will not organise anything for you. If what you miss about Arc is the sidebar, one of the tools in section 1 will make you happier than ours will.

Read about Tabtwinsy

4. Automatic tidying

Arc archived tabs you stopped touching. Dia has a similar cleanup setting built in. In Chrome, its own Memory Saver discards unused tabs without closing them, and several "auto close tabs" extensions will close them on a timer. Honestly, most people who miss this end up happier with a manual habit and a tab group named Later.

5. The look

Themes, accent colours, a browser that does not feel like a filing cabinet. Sidebar extensions mostly bring their own theming, Vivaldi is endlessly customisable, and Zen Browser is the closest thing to Arc's aesthetic that is still being developed.

The short version

You miss the sidebar

Leap, Side Space, a vertical tabs extension, or move to Vivaldi, Edge or Zen.

You miss Spaces

Workona or Toby if you want cloud and accounts. Chrome tab groups if you do not.

You miss opening a window and finding your tabs already there

Tabtwinsy. This is the gap almost nothing else fills.

You miss the tidying

Chrome Memory Saver, an auto-close extension, or a habit.

You miss how it looked

Zen Browser or Vivaldi.