Arc Stops Working on Mac and Windows December 22, With No Patch Promise After Sign-Ups Close

The Browser Company will switch Arc off on Mac and Windows on December 22, 2026, and stopped accepting new Arc accounts on October 22, according to the company's farewell page at arc.net. Sign-in and tab sync on the iOS and Android Arc Search app end a month earlier, on November 23.

The company announced the date on Arc's X account, 9to5Mac reported on October 22: "We've decided to sunset Arc on December 22, 2026." The farewell page is signed by Josh and "everyone at" The Browser Company. TechCrunch identifies Josh Miller as the chief executive.

The three dates that matter

Arc development had already stopped in May 2025, 9to5Mac said, so the new part is a hard end date for a product people use every day. The page lays out three steps.

Date	What changes
October 22, 2026	New Arc accounts can no longer be created. The latest Arc build adds a full data export.
November 23, 2026	On iOS and Android, Browse for Me and other AI features switch off. Arc Search keeps working as a browser but drops sign-in and tab sync.
December 22, 2026	Arc stops working on macOS and Windows. Accounts are deactivated, personal data is deleted within 30 days, and Arc Search leaves Google Play.

The sentence worth reading twice is the one about the time in between. Until December 22, the page says, Arc "will continue to work as usual and will receive basic updates." It makes no commitment about security patches, and 9to5Mac's report says the same.

That matters for a browser. A user who stays on Arc for the full two months is running software whose vendor has said its security and engineering effort is going elsewhere.

Why the company says it is doing this

The reason the company gives is security cost. "Keeping a browser secure takes constant, dedicated work that is only increasing in the age of AI," the company wrote, adding that Dia "was built from the ground up to meet today's security standards, so that's where our engineering and security teams will focus moving forward."

TechCrunch, in a piece by Aditya Mehta, added the ownership context: Atlassian acquired The Browser Company for $610 million in 2025. The farewell page itself does not mention Atlassian.

What moving to Dia involves

The company says passwords, bookmarks, extensions and history import into Dia. Arc's Spaces become Profiles and its Folders become Tab Groups; TechCrunch's wording is "Pinned Tab Groups". Arc's browser features are free in Dia and the AI features are optional, the page says.

The task most Arc users will hit first is the rename. Anyone who organised a working day around Folders in the sidebar now has to rebuild that layout as Tab Groups, and the page does not say how the import maps them one for one. Treat the import as a copy, not a move, and keep the exported Arc data until Dia has held up for a week.

The company also says Dia beats Arc on speed, stability and security benchmarks. Those are the company's own claims, and neither report names an independent test.

The open-source request

Users asked on social media for Arc to be open-sourced. Miller replied, as TechCrunch quoted him: "While we'd love to open-source Arc someday, we can't do that meaningfully without also open-sourcing ADK." ADK is the Arc Development Kit, a proprietary SDK that also powers Dia, and Miller said it "is still core to our company's value."

That closes off the usual escape route for abandoned software. A community fork would need the part the company will not release.

The farewell page tells users to export or import their data before December 22. After that date, the company says, Arc data can no longer be identified or retrieved for data requests. For other cases where a platform changed who gets access, see our report on Garmin's developer program, and for acquired companies, boom-era startups sold below peak.

The next fixed date is November 23, when the mobile apps lose sign-in.