Can Firefox replace Arc? Mozilla begins courting power users

Following the confirmation that Arc is completely shutting down on December 22, Mozilla is already trying to win over its users. The official Firefox account on X put out a post earlier today asking displaced Arc fans what they want to see in their next browser.

Instead of just offering generic sympathy, Mozilla straight up admitted that The Browser Company inspired a lot of its recent design choices.

“Arc’s innovations influenced some of our own features,” the Firefox team wrote, pointing directly to their Sidebar, Split View, and an upcoming Mini Window feature.

That Mini Window tease immediately caught the attention of people in the replies who are desperate for a Little Arc replacement, which Firefox confirmed is “coming soon!”

If you are one of the many users who refused to switch away from Arc even after it went into maintenance mode, Little Arc is probably the biggest thing holding you back from other browsers. Having external links pop up in a quick floating window instead of cluttering your main tab bar is tough to give up once it becomes muscle memory.

Still, moving from Arc to stock Firefox right now comes with a few compromises. When one user brought up how they are looking at the Firefox fork Zen because they need separate profiles, workspaces, and workspace-specific pinned tabs, the Firefox team had to admit they aren’t quite there yet.

“Pins that belong to a workspace instead of being global isn’t on our public roadmap, but we’re passing it on to the product team,” they replied, while also reminding folks that Multi-Account Containers can handle separate logins.

Other users jumped into the thread asking for a way to hide the top URL bar completely or bring over mobile perks like pinch-to-summarize, to which Firefox floated the idea of a “shake to summarize” gesture instead.

Even with dedicated Arc replacements like Crest popping up on the scene, achieving complete feature parity with Arc has proven surprisingly difficult for developers. That’s why we still have hardcore Arc fans who’ve been unwilling to give up their beloved browser.

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