Integrate Arc Browser, Readwise Reader, and Obsidian in this new series of notes.
arc browser
WarrenWeb Workflow
WarrenWeb Workflow
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Arc – Browse for me
NOTE: See an enhanced version of this original post on my new Ghost website for WarrenWeb: Arc – Browse for Me. It has now been split into pages for Tidy Tabs, Instant Links, and Arc Sync.
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The Browser Company released this week’s update to Arc browser with several interesting features: Arc Sync, Tidy Tabs, and Instant Links. With these automatic tab groups, you can easily save them in Pinned Tabs, move selected folders to another Arc space, or copy all its tabs as Markdown links for an Obsidian note or map.
Arc Sync
The new Arc Sync feature provides end-to-end encryption for your sidebar across your devices that is fast and doesn’t depend on iCloud. This cross-platform capability is a step towards Arc, anywhere (iCloud sync to be phased out soon).
Click “Turn On” in the Arc Max tab of Arc > Settings (Cmd + comma), just below the Sync Sidebar with iCloud setting.
Tidy Tabs
Now you have a browser that tidies for you. It automatically makes sense of all those links that you collected while reading your email, feeds, or social media; or maybe you were just browsing interesting stuff for your efforts, or researching a topic that you’re working on. This is especially handy during the Add phase of your PKM workflow.
Previously, you would have clustered related tabs together and then selected multiple related tabs into a tab group and assigned a folder name. Now your browser helps you get this done with Arc Max AI. Then you might drag selected folders into your Pinned Tabs, maybe under a dated folder within Calendar, or perhaps move them to another space for further Relate work, perhaps for Efforts.
Press the broomstick 🧹 icon at the top of your Today Tabs in the sidebar, and let your Sidebar organize itself whenever you have over six Today tabs. Tidy Tabs only organizes Today Tabs, which appears below the + New Tab button. Your other tabs will not be affected. You can turn on Today Tabs by CMD + T > Settings > Max.
In my Web space I use for browsing, I had 33 Today tabs in my sidebar; Arc analyzed them with AI and grouped them into the following 6 folders.
- Javascript
- Cooking
- Obsidian
- Apple
- Diabetes
- Other
For example, I had clicked some email links on Medium about Apple Vision Pro and Apple Watch, as well as another one on Pickle (pkl) that Apple introduced as a new open source programming language for configuration. Arc automatically grouped them together in a tab folder named Apple.
Instant Links
What if you could just tell your browser exactly what you wanted, and it understood you? Well, today you get a glimpse into the future of what browsing the web might look like.
Turn on the new Instant Links feature with Arc > Settings > Arc Max > Instant Links, and let Arc browse for you.
- Press Shift + Enter after entering a web search into Command-T, which instantly opens the top result.
- You can also search multiple queries – try experimenting with your searches.
- To create a folder of tabs, use “Folder of” before your search query; for example, “Folder of the cutest cat breeds”
Try this:
- Press CMD +
- Enter this search: Folder of the cutest cat breeds
- Press Shift + Enter
- Arc will search the web and immediately open the top results with the web page from the SprucePets site.
- But it also automatically creates a tab folder in your sidebar with the name “Cutest Cat Breeds” that will contain these 5 tabs:
- 23 Cutest Cat Breeds Anyone Will Love
- 20 Cutest Cat Breeds of 2024 | Picture…
- Cutest Cat Breeds | Petfinder
- What are the cutest and rarest breeds…
- The Cutest Cat Breeds: 14 Cats You’ll…
You might enjoy last week’s announcement that shows “A browser that browses for you”: Meet Act II of Arc Browser – YouTube video (15 min).
Arc: Copy Folder as Markdown Links to Obsidian
Did you realize you can actually copy all tabs within a folder in the Arc sidebar Pinned Tabs to an Obsidian note as Markdown links? This is so powerful, convenient, and easy to do in a few simple steps.
Consider the following scenario, where you are browsing the web and find a bunch of interesting related links. Just follow these steps to collect and cluster these links so you can create a new Obsidian note or, even better, add a heading group in a Map of Content (MOC, or simply “Map”).
This means that you now easily add related web links in your notes and maps, just like other Obsidian note links within your Obsidian vault. For example, this might be something you currently do for other internal note Wiki links (double square-bracket) that you have selected in the Explorer or maybe even dragged from Search results based on a name, tag, or keyword.
Collect
If you have Arc set as your default browser, every time you click on any link in any app, such as Arc, Airmail (or Mail), OmniFocus (or Things), DEVONthink, Drafts, etc., it will open a new tab in the Arc browser in the Today Tabs section of your sidebar.
In traditional browsers, this would have resulted in tons of tabs that you would then have to save in Safari tab groups or a bookmark manager so you could revisit them, and then you can to copy/paste each individual URL to an Obsidian note and add the page title so it’s saved as a Markdown link.
Cluster
When you have gathered multiple links during a browsing session, simply cluster them together in a group. You select multiple tabs in the Today Tabs section of your Arc sidebar, using right-click and select each one you want to be included.
Sometimes it might help to use drag & drop to move individual tabs next to other related ones, so it’s easier to move the group all at once.
If they are all together, you can just select the first and last ones in the collection rather than having to select each one individually using the Shift key. Choose the menu option to New folder with n items.
That will create a new folder in the Pinned Tabs section of your sidebar and allow you to assign a name to that new group folder, which will now contain all the selected links.
Nested folders
If you want to organize several folders together under a parent folder, the easiest way is move the folder is simply to drag it on top of the target parent folder.
Note: If you to Copy All Links as Markdown for a parent folder that contains sub-folders, it will copy all links across all these sub-folders with no identification of the sub-folders using headings. So it’s probably best that you copy only the sub-folders and assign headings, and work your way back up the directory tree.
I suggest inserting the folder name (wrapped with double-asterisk for bold font) before each folder’s list. It would be nice if Arc did this automatically, and I have submitted that suggestion to them hoping that they might had that capability.
Shared folders
You also have an option that enables you to send this folder to anyone, on any browser. Just select Share Folder… on the folder context menu, and click the Copy Link to Folder button. Note that anyone with this link can view your Folder.
Viewers won’t receive future updates and this permalink cannot be deleted. You have a checkbox called “Never show me this again” that you can check if you want to bypass this notice pop-up in the future and just copy the folder link. When you hover over the folder, a “share” icon appears to the right with only one option to click as Share Folder.
Arc – Shared Collections
New Arc Browser feature: Shared Collections allows you to share Folders, Spaces, or Split Views to anyone (even those not usung Arc).
Also you can set your default Notes app to use in Arc Browser if you don’t want to use theirs.
See Arc Browser for more…