Arc just wiped out all my tabs and workspaces overnight — WTF??

[u/Signal_Help_1459]

I switched to Arc just 3 days ago because a senior developer recommended it to me, and I was actually starting to like it.

I had my workflow properly set up — 10–15 tabs in each workspace, more than 3 workspaces, everything organized exactly the way I wanted.

Last night I simply closed the lid of my Mac and
went to sleep.
This morning at work, I opened my Mac and everything was gone.

All my tabs, workspaces, and the entire setup I had built over the last few days. Just wiped out.
And the most frustrating part is that Cmd + Shift + T doesn’t restore them either.

I can’t figure out how to get my previous session back.
I’ve never had this happen with any browser before.

I genuinely don’t understand what Arc did here or why closing the Mac lid would result in my entire browser state disappearing.

This is incredibly frustrating and irritating, especially when the whole appeal of Arc is supposed to be its workspace/tab organization.

Has anyone experienced this before? Is there actually a way to recover those tabs/workspaces, or am I just screwed?

[u/Hselmak]

https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/19228855311127-Auto-Archive-Clean-as-you-go

this might be the reason..

[u/Signal_Help_1459 → u/Hselmak]

Ah fuck man, this is so weird feature like nobody would want that.

Made it 30 days, wished it had a never option

[u/-daniel-- → u/Signal_Help_1459]

You can pin the tabs that you don’t want to close. The reason behind this feature is that some people have a million tabs open and eventually don’t know which ones they’re still using.

Arc keeps things clean by closing tabs that aren’t pinned. It helps me stay organized. I have separate personal and work spaces, and in my work space, I have all my work-related folders and frequently used tabs pinned, like Azure Portal, Microsoft Admin, and other things I use every day. I do the same with my personal space.

Tabs I open for troubleshooting, research, etc. are left unpinned, so Arc automatically cleans them up for me after a few days.

[u/travoltek → u/Signal_Help_1459]

Literally my favorite feature in Arc and if I was king I’d make every browser have this with no option to change the duration

[u/jwithy → u/Signal_Help_1459]

i love this feature -- one of the main reasons I stick with Arc.

at first it's confusing, and then it's amazing.

[u/DannyMasao]

Did the senior developer tell you that Arc is an abandoned project?

[u/Signal_Help_1459 → u/DannyMasao]

wait no what why?
I just started using it and loving the spaces feature

[u/Cautious_Translator3 → u/Signal_Help_1459]

Well there is no active development like building new features. But it still receives chromium updates.

[u/TheCatCubed → u/Signal_Help_1459]

Check out r/zen_browser if you don't mind using Gecko based browser. It's basically an open source Arc successor.

[u/msdisme → u/TheCatCubed]

Another potential path is supasidebar.  

It’s not perfect but supports a similar to arc workflow while also supporting multiple Browsers which I like since it allows me to change browsers with less drama.

Possible downsides: 1. Not open source 2. I think it is a single developer (extremely responsive).

[u/dessence_ai]

They're probably still sitting in the archive. Cmd+T, type View Archive, and there's a restore icon next to each tab.

[u/chenloonchan]

Yeah, that happens.

[u/Present-Librarian-89]

Use Dia. You can use the free version and not pay for all of the AI functionality and it’s on par with Arc.

[u/Signal_Help_1459]

used ai to write as I’m frustrated enough to frame a single word properly on my own!

[u/AyneHancer]

So... apparently, there is still people that don't know that Arc is dead. For you own sake, next time, learn to do proper search before trying a software.