Arc Browser Keyboard Shortcuts
Arc's shortcuts are worth learning separately from other browsers rather than assumed from them, because several of the most familiar combinations do something different here. Cmd+W does not close a tab, it archives one. Cmd+T does not simply open a blank page, it opens the Command Bar. Cmd+D pins rather than bookmarks. None of these are quirks for their own sake — they follow from Arc's decision to treat tabs as temporary by default and the sidebar as the real organising surface — but they do mean that muscle memory carried in from Chrome will produce unexpected results in the first week. The browser is also built around three concepts that have no equivalent elsewhere, and each has its own bindings. Spaces group tabs into separate named workspaces with their own themes, switched with Cmd+Option and the arrow keys. Split View tiles up to four tabs side by side, built entirely on Ctrl+Shift combinations rather than the Cmd combinations used everywhere else in the app. And Little Arc opens a single frameless window for a quick lookup that never touches your main session, on Cmd+Option+N from anywhere in macOS. One piece of context belongs at the top of any Arc reference written now. The Browser Company was acquired by Atlassian in a deal announced in September 2025 and closed that October, and Arc has since been in maintenance mode — it still runs, it still receives security updates, but it is no longer getting new features while the team's attention is on Dia, their AI-first browser. There is no announced shutdown date. Practically, that stability is good news for a shortcut reference: the bindings below are unlikely to move, which has not always been true of Arc. It also means that if you are deciding whether to invest in learning them, you are learning a keymap for software in a known end-state rather than one under active redesign. A note on platforms. Arc began as a macOS application and the Windows build has consistently trailed it, so the Mac column below is the authoritative one. On Windows, Cmd becomes Ctrl for the standard combinations, but not every feature has shipped there, and Space and Split View handling in particular are worth verifying against your own build rather than assumed from the Mac behaviour.
Spaces Sidebar
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show / hide the sidebar | Ctrl+S | Cmd+S | Collapses the sidebar out of view and brings it back. Because Arc has no horizontal tab strip, hiding the sidebar leaves the page genuinely alone on screen — this is Arc's closest equivalent to a reading mode, and it is a toggle rather than an auto-hide. |
| Switch to the next Space | Ctrl+Alt+Right | Cmd+Option+Right | Moves one Space to the right in the Space switcher. The sidebar slides rather than cutting, which is deliberate — the animation is what tells you which direction you moved, since Spaces have no persistent index shown on screen. |
| Switch to the previous Space | Ctrl+Alt+Left | Cmd+Option+Left | Moves one Space to the left. Paired with the next-Space binding this is the fastest way to move between two adjacent Spaces, which is why people who use Spaces heavily tend to order them by how often they switch between them. |
| Jump directly to a numbered Space | Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+9 | Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+9 | Goes straight to a Space by position rather than stepping through them. Note this is Ctrl, not Cmd, on macOS as well — Cmd with a number selects an item within the current sidebar instead, and the two are easy to confuse. |
| Go to a numbered sidebar item | Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+9 | Cmd+1 through Cmd+9 | Selects a pinned item by its position in the current Space's sidebar. This is the binding most Chrome users expect to switch tabs, and in Arc it addresses pinned items in the sidebar rather than open tabs in a strip. |
| Create a new Space | No default — click + in the Space switcher | No default — click + in the Space switcher | Arc ships no keyboard binding for creating a Space. That is a defensible omission — Spaces are meant to be long-lived containers you make a handful of times, not something created in the flow of browsing — but it surprises people who expect symmetry with the switching shortcuts. |
Tabs Windows
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| New tab / open the Command Bar | Ctrl+T | Cmd+T | Opens Arc's Command Bar rather than a blank new-tab page. You type a URL, a search, a command or the name of an already-open tab, and Arc decides what you meant — so this single binding replaces the new tab, address bar and tab search of a conventional browser. |
| Archive the current tab | Ctrl+W | Cmd+W | Removes the tab from the sidebar and files it in the Archive rather than discarding it. The keystroke is the one every browser uses for close, but the outcome is recoverable — which is why Arc users rarely hesitate over it the way they would elsewhere. |
| Reopen the last archived tab | Ctrl+Shift+T | Cmd+Shift+T | Pulls the most recently archived tab back into the sidebar, repeatedly if pressed again. Less critical here than in other browsers precisely because nothing was destroyed — the Archive holds it either way. |
| Pin or unpin the current tab | Ctrl+D | Cmd+D | Moves a tab into the pinned section of the current Space, where it survives the automatic tidying that clears ordinary tabs. This is Arc's replacement for bookmarking, and it is the reason the browser can afford to treat every unpinned tab as disposable. |
| Clear all unpinned tabs | Ctrl+Shift+K | Cmd+Shift+K | Archives every unpinned tab in the current Space at once. Arc does this automatically on a timer you set, but the manual version is the one people actually use — a deliberate reset at the end of a task rather than waiting for the clock. |
| Previous / next tab | Ctrl+Alt+Up / Ctrl+Alt+Down | Cmd+Option+Up / Cmd+Option+Down | Steps up and down the sidebar list. Cmd+{ and Cmd+} do the same job for anyone whose fingers already know that pattern from other applications — the vertical arrow version tends to feel more natural given Arc's vertical layout. |
| Open a Little Arc window | Ctrl+Alt+N | Cmd+Option+N | Opens a single frameless window holding one page, without touching your main session. It works from anywhere in macOS, not just from inside Arc, which is what makes it a genuine quick-lookup tool rather than another window to manage. |
| New browser window | Ctrl+N | Cmd+N | Opens a full second Arc window with its own view of your Spaces. Cmd+Shift+N opens an incognito window instead, which behaves as it does in any Chromium browser since Arc is built on that engine. |
Split View Easels
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add a Split View pane | Ctrl+Shift+= | Ctrl+Shift+= | Tiles another tab alongside the current one, up to four panes. Note the Ctrl prefix on macOS — Arc's entire Split View keymap uses Ctrl rather than Cmd, which is the single most common reason people conclude the feature has no shortcuts. |
| Remove a Split View pane | Ctrl+Shift+- | Ctrl+Shift+- | Collapses one pane out of the split, leaving the rest tiled. The tab itself is not archived — it returns to being an ordinary sidebar entry, so removing a pane is a layout change rather than a way of closing anything. |
| Move between Split View panes | Ctrl+Shift+[ / Ctrl+Shift+] | Ctrl+Shift+[ / Ctrl+Shift+] | Shifts keyboard focus from one pane to the next without reaching for the mouse. Ctrl+Shift with a number jumps straight to that pane, which is faster once a split has three or four members. |
| New Note | Ctrl+N (inside Arc) | Ctrl+N (inside Arc) | Creates a Note, Arc's built-in document that lives in the sidebar like any other item. Ctrl+Option+N opens one directly into a split pane, which is the version worth learning — a note beside the page it refers to is the whole point. |
| New Easel | Ctrl+Shift+E | Ctrl+Shift+E | Opens an Easel, an infinite canvas that holds screenshots, text and live clips of web pages that keep updating. It is closer to a whiteboard than a document, and the live-clip behaviour is the part with no real equivalent in another browser. |
Navigation
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open the Command Bar for the current tab | Ctrl+L | Cmd+L | Opens the Command Bar prefilled with the current URL, so you can edit the address you are on. Cmd+T opens the same bar empty for a new destination — the distinction between editing here and going elsewhere. |
| Find on page | Ctrl+F | Cmd+F | Searches within the current page. Cmd+G and Cmd+Shift+G step forward and back through matches, and Cmd+Option+F opens find-and-replace, which is unusual for a browser and works inside editable fields. |
| Copy the current page URL | Ctrl+Shift+C | Cmd+Shift+C | Copies the address without selecting the Command Bar first. Adding Option — Cmd+Shift+Option+C — copies it as a Markdown link with the page title already filled in, which saves a step for anyone writing notes or documentation. |
| Go back / forward | Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right | Cmd+Left / Cmd+Right | Moves through the current tab's history. Cmd+[ and Cmd+] are bound to the same actions, which matters in Arc because the bracket keys are otherwise heavily used by Split View under a different modifier. |
| Zoom in / out / reset | Ctrl++ / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0 | Cmd++ / Cmd+- / Cmd+0 | Standard Chromium zoom, remembered per site rather than per tab. Worth knowing when a page looks wrong in Split View — a narrow pane inherits whatever zoom you set for that domain in a full window. |
| Open developer tools | Ctrl+Alt+I | Cmd+Option+I | Opens Chromium's DevTools unchanged — Arc adds no layer of its own. Cmd+Option+J goes straight to the JavaScript console and Cmd+Option+C to element inspection, exactly as in Chrome. |
| View history | Ctrl+Y | Cmd+Y | Opens browsing history. Distinct from the Archive, which holds tabs you closed in this Space — history records pages you visited, the Archive records tabs you had open, and finding an old tab usually means the Archive rather than here. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Cmd+W not actually close my tab?
Because in Arc it archives rather than closes. The tab leaves the sidebar and goes to the Archive, where you can find it again through the Command Bar or the Archive view. This follows from Arc treating unpinned tabs as disposable by design — if closing were permanent, an automatic tidying feature that clears your tabs on a timer would be alarming rather than useful. The practical effect is that Cmd+W in Arc carries none of the 'wait, was I still using that' risk it carries elsewhere.
Is Arc still being developed?
Not in the sense of new features. Atlassian's acquisition of The Browser Company was announced in September 2025 and closed the following month, and Arc has been in maintenance mode since — it runs, it receives security updates, but development attention moved to Dia, the company's AI-first browser. No shutdown date has been announced. For a shortcut reference this is unusually good news: a keymap in maintenance is a keymap that stops moving, and Arc's bindings did shift more than most during its active development.
Why do the Split View shortcuts use Ctrl on a Mac?
They genuinely do, and it is the most common reason people conclude Split View has no keyboard support. Adding a pane is Ctrl+Shift+=, removing one is Ctrl+Shift+-, and moving between panes is Ctrl+Shift with the bracket keys or a number. Every other part of Arc follows the macOS convention of Cmd for application commands, so this corner is genuinely inconsistent. The likely reason is that the Cmd+Shift combinations were already spoken for by the time Split View shipped, but whatever the cause, it has to be learned as an exception rather than derived.
What is the difference between Cmd+T and Cmd+L?
Both open the Command Bar; they differ in what it contains. Cmd+T opens it empty, ready for a new destination, and whatever you choose opens as a new tab. Cmd+L opens it prefilled with the current tab's URL, so you can edit the address you are already on and stay in the same tab. In a conventional browser these are the new-tab button and the address bar respectively — Arc collapses both into one interface and distinguishes them by which key you pressed to get there.
How do I switch Spaces without the arrow keys?
Ctrl with a number jumps directly to a Space by position — Ctrl+1 for the first, Ctrl+2 for the second, and so on. The catch is that this is Ctrl on macOS too, while Cmd with a number selects a pinned item inside the current Space's sidebar. Two similar-looking bindings addressing different things, and mixing them up is the most common Spaces navigation error. If a number key is jumping to a pinned tab when you expected a Space, you pressed Cmd where you wanted Ctrl.
Do these shortcuts work on the Windows version?
Mostly, with the usual substitution of Ctrl for Cmd, but the Windows build has always trailed the Mac one and not every feature reached it at the same time. The Split View and Spaces bindings in particular are worth verifying in your own build rather than assumed — and since both platforms are now in maintenance mode, whatever gaps exist are unlikely to close. Arc has never shipped a Linux version.
Where did my tab go if it was not closed and not in history?
The Archive. Arc distinguishes between history, which records pages you visited, and the Archive, which holds tabs that were open in a Space and have since been cleared — either by Cmd+W, by Cmd+Shift+K, or by the automatic tidying on its timer. A tab you had open yesterday is in the Archive; a page you clicked through three months ago is in history. The Command Bar searches both, which is usually the fastest route when you are not sure which one you need.
Can I stop Arc from clearing my tabs automatically?
Yes, and it is worth doing deliberately rather than fighting the default. The auto-archive interval is a setting, and it can be extended or effectively disabled. The alternative, and the one the design intends, is to pin anything you want kept with Cmd+D — pinned items are exempt from tidying, survive Cmd+Shift+K, and stay put in the sidebar indefinitely. Most people who initially find the clearing alarming end up pinning more and changing the setting less.
Is there a way to see every binding in the app itself?
Arc lists its shortcuts under the standard macOS menu bar, which is hidden by default because Arc runs without visible browser chrome — moving the cursor to the top of the screen brings it back, and the menus there carry the current bindings for your build. The Command Bar is the other route: typing the name of an action shows it alongside its shortcut, which doubles as a way to discover bindings you did not know existed while you are already reaching for the command.
Does Arc support Chrome extensions and their shortcuts?
Yes — Arc is built on Chromium and installs extensions from the Chrome Web Store, and extension shortcuts work as they would in Chrome. The one thing to watch is collision: Arc has claimed several combinations that Chrome leaves free, so an extension binding that worked elsewhere may be intercepted here. Extension shortcuts can be reassigned from the same Chromium settings page Chrome uses, which is the fix when a conflict shows up.