Import all Tabs, Folders & Profiles from Arc Browser

[menjilx]

Captchas

• I have read the instructions.
• I have searched existing issues and avoided creating duplicates.
• I am not filing an enhancement request.

What happened?

Is adding a feature to import all Arc tabs and folders to Zen and maintaining the folder structures and profiles possible?

TIA

Reproducible?

• I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.

Version

1

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

macOS - Intel

Relevant log output

No response

[KakouMoses]

I would ask the same but with the Windows version (I'm currently on Windows 11)

[rohitt-gupta]

are there any updates on this feature??

[mr-cheffy]

Where does Arc store their bookmarks, etc? Is it the same on macos and windows?

[pillarcoin]

Maybe this repo would help.
https://github.com/ivnvxd/arc-export

[ivanglushko]

Does Zen have notion of folders like Arc does? It the only feature we lack

[MaximeCrp]

It's on its way with #7359

[Arimodu]

Ill chip in here to bump this as well. The only thing stopping me and 2 other friends from moving from Arc on Windows to Zen right now is that moving tabs and spaces would be a huge pain in the arse. It is unfortunate but it seems that Arc itself is EOL right now, as TBC is working on their new AI powered thingy, and Arc on windows in its current form is still quite buggy, so there is plenty of reason to switch to another browser.
I am up to implement it myself and PR it in if someone is willing to point me to the import logic location in the codebase, I looked around and couldnt find it, and honestly if I would be spending 2 hours looking through the codebase just to find it I might as well just move my tabs manually.

[Eatham532]

Hey, I did some digging for implementing this. I was thinking about doing a PR myself but i've got big exams this year and so don't have enough time to complete it. Instead I decided to dump all of the things I have currently uncovered.

The /browser/components/migrate folder contains the MigrationUtils.sys.mjs file that contains links to migrating different browsers and also contains the function that is run by firefox's "import from another browser" wizard.

Arc uses the StorableSidebar.json file for storing all of the tab data. This repo contains more information for finding that.

The rest of this information I found on windows. But I assume that the folder structure will be similar for both the mac and windows apps.
The User Data is in [ArcData]\LocalCache\Local\Arc\User Data (Where ArcData is the root path for Arc's app data. Same place as the StroableSidebar.json file)

Here you will find a Default folder and other folders. Some other folders might be for a profile as well. E.g. I have a Profile 1 folder in the same User Data directory. I suspect if someone had even more profiles, they would be stored here too.
Inside the Default and Profile 1 folder I found multiple Sqlite databases containing the user data. (History, Login data, Web data, etc...).

Apologies if the way I organized my findings is confusing. Feel free to ask anything else from me.

[cristoslc]

+1 -- would give Zen a try in a heartbeat if I could one-click my Arc profiles and spaces. I have multiple profiles (Pesonal, Work, etc.) and multiple spaces within profiles (e.g., one for each active work project) that I'd want to repro in Zen. But with 5 profiles and ~25 spaces, it's too much of a time investment to do manually just to see if I'm as productive in Zen as I am in Arc.

[cristoslc]

I haven't tried them yet, but some potentially relevant search resutls:

• https://gist.github.com/clouedoc/4acc8355782f394152d8ce19ceaf53ba | migrating via shuffling Arc profiles to Chrome and using existing import
• https://github.com/ivnvxd/arc-export | converting Arc pinned tabs to bookmarks files (but doesn't help with rest of space config)

[SamuelMereau]

Would love to see an update to this...
An integrated solution within Zen would be ideal.

[jeremycastanza]

Was considering contributing to this as well... I've been looking at Arc. A full migration would be a little complex to some extent since there are a lot of SQL Lite databases that store different things.

My biggest thing are pinned tabs with folders. I think once folders are fully stable in the latest release this feature will probably be easy to build. Most of the data looks to be in StorableSidebar.json. Looks like the data would just need to be simplified in the JSON file and prepped for some type of import and/or mapping to Zen's structure.

@mr-cheffy - Did you have any additional thoughts on this one? Also, where are these settings going to be in Zen as it relates to folders and such?

[mr-cheffy]

My idea was to use Firefox's already existing bookmarks importer and just patch it to make folders instead of bookmark folders

[jeremycastanza]

@mr-cheffy - I have a stripped down schema derived from Arc's JSON file. If you think this would be useful for setting the stage for an import or mapping to Zen's folders, LMK the best way to share. I also have a script for generating it from the StorableSidebar.json.

[antifuchs]

In terms of tools that do the export, I've just used https://xiaogliu.github.io/export-arc-bookmarks/, which (in contrast to the arc-export python tool) runs entirely locally in the browser and manages to get the order of bookmarks and folders right. Can recommend.

Now if only the import step was slightly less convoluted... (:

[flawnn]

For less technical people, I have built Arc Archiver as a way to conveniently export whole folders (and soon spaces) as JSON.

I would love to also extend this to help out with moving away if there is anything that makes sense. The least that I can be helpful with, is providing the scraping & modelling logic for extracting folder data.

I don't use Zen (yet) but was curious what all of you think.

[hadifarnoud]

that is a good start. I'd say half way done.
cheers