You can see the sites I’ve added as Favorites above the Workspace name (WORK).
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Arc Browser does Bring fun when browsing the web. It’s unique and beautifully designed, and the longer you use the browser, the more features you’ll find to help you enjoy the web more. One feature I’ve discovered that makes collaborating (or just sharing information) easier is Shared Folders.
Folder? In the browser?
Also: 5 ways Arc browser makes web browsing fun again
Serious. And they are Actually Useful for keeping your tabs more organized. You can create folders for any topic or category and drag and drop open tabs into them so they don’t clutter the interface.
But those folders serve another purpose — sharing. You can create a folder, fill it with tabs, and then share it with others — no matter what browser they use.
One thing to note: People you’ve shared folders with won’t receive updates about those folders, and you can’t remove the permalink for a folder. Therefore, the only way to revoke access to a folder is to delete the folder. With that in mind, I like to think of Shared Folders as a temporary repository for links that I eventually delete when I’m done using them.
In any case, Shared Folders is a feature I’ve grown to love, and I wanted to show you how it works.
Create a folder
What you need: The only thing you need is Arc Browser installed on MacOS. At the time of this writing, the sharing feature is not working Arc Browser for Windows. (Hopefully this feature will be available on the Windows version soon.) That’s it. Please share.
Open Arc Browser and navigate to the space where you want the new folder to be. Once there, right-click (or tap with two fingers) in an empty space and select New Folder. When prompted, name the new folder and press Enter on your keyboard.
There are a number of things you can do from this right-click menu.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Now that you’ve created your folder, you can drag and drop as many tabs into it as you want. Remember that this is the only way to add tabs to folders, as there is no right-click context menu entry for Move Tab to Folder.
Share folders
Once your folder has been created, it’s time to share it. Here’s how.
Right-click (or tap with two fingers) on the newly created folder. From the pop-up menu, select Shared Folders.
You can also add nested folders, copy all links, etc
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
From the resulting pop-up, click Copy link to folder. This will create a permalink for the folder.
If you click Never Show Me This Again, when clicking Share from the right-click menu, it will automatically copy the link to your clipboard.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Also: Arc browser is now available for Windows and is much better than Chrome
With the permalink copied, you can share it any way you want, such as email and texting. Just remember that anyone you share the link with will have access to every tab in the folder, so share with caution.
Once the recipient receives the link, they can click it and it will open a page that allows them to open any link in the folder.
Another cool folder trick
Besides sharing your folders, there’s another cool trick that might come in handy. Let’s say you’ve collected a number of links in a directory, all related to a specific category. If you right-click (or tap with two fingers) on a folder, you can select Turn X Into Space (where X is the name of the folder). This will create a new space, named after the folder, that includes all the links in the folder.
Also: The best secure browsers to protect your online privacy
And that’s all it takes to create and share your folders in Arc Browser. This is another feature that makes me glad I moved to Arc on MacOS. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t remind the Browser Company that they should port Arc Browser to Linux.
