Arc

Arc is a free AI assistant app that works on the screen you are already looking at. On Android it appears as a floating sidebar layered over every app; on Mac it is a panel you summon with Control+Space over any window. Rather than asking the user to describe their situation, Arc reads the current screen and acts on it — summarizing, reading aloud, rewriting, chatting, extracting structured details and running automated actions. It is designed for people who move between many apps and want AI help without leaving the app they are in, including students, writers, researchers, knowledge workers and anyone who benefits from hearing text read aloud. Arc is available on Android and Mac, with Windows in beta and iPhone in development. The problem Arc addresses is the friction of the conventional chatbot workflow. With a chatbot, the content that matters is never where the assistant is: a user has to select the text, copy it, open the AI app, paste it and explain the context, then copy the answer back. Arc's own site frames that as "5 steps · 2 apps · context lost every time." That overhead is small per action but constant in aggregate, and it discourages people from using AI for the long tail of everyday tasks — trimming a long email, checking the tone of a reply, pulling a tracking code out of a shipping message, or hearing an article while commuting. Arc's premise is the inverse: chatbots make you bring the screen to them, while Arc is already on it. Because it sits over the app you are using, the context is available without description, and the answer lands where the work is happening, producing "1 step · 0 app switches." Arc's summarizing capability turns articles, PDFs, long emails and message threads into numbered key points with an auto-detected title and source, so a reader can grasp the argument of a document at a glance. Because the summary is generated from the screen the user is on, follow-up questions can be asked about that same page without re-explaining the context, and the content can be explained or translated in more than ten languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi and Chinese. Summaries can be listened to, copied or saved to the library. The Listen feature complements it with natural text-to-speech voices and automatic language detection: any screen — article, document or message — can be read aloud with one tap from the floating sidebar, which Arc notes was built with accessibility in mind. That makes it practical to consume long material while commuting, cooking or resting the eyes. AI Writer works inside the text box the user is already typing in. It can rewrite a passage in a chosen tone, fix grammar, draft a reply or turn rough notes into a post, and then insert the finished text directly back into the focused field — in Gmail, WhatsApp, Slack or any other app with a text field — without any copy-paste. Replies can also be generated from the context of the conversation on screen, which is useful when a message needs an answer in a particular tone and there is no time to craft one. Smart Extract covers the opposite need: pulling structured facts out of a screen. It reads what is visible and returns dates, contacts, links, phone numbers, addresses, meeting times and tracking codes in a single pass, with nothing to highlight first, and every item can be copied with one tap. Beyond built-in actions, Arc lets users turn their best prompts into one-tap actions. A prompt written once is saved as a custom action that can be run on any screen, and it can be bound to a global hotkey so a repeated task becomes a single keystroke. For people who would rather not build from scratch, Arc hosts a community library of more than 500 ready-made actions created by other users for work, study, writing and research; the library can be filtered by category and language, added to the sidebar with a tap, and users can share their own actions in return. Arc also includes a study feature: it can generate a flashcard deck from the page, lecture notes or paper on screen and review it inside the app in a question-and-answer mode, with decks saved to the library across devices. Arc's workflow is deliberately short. On Mac, pressing Control+Space opens the panel over whatever is on screen; on Android, tapping the floating Arc bubble opens the sidebar over any app. From there the user picks an action — summarize, read aloud, write, chat, extract, or one of their own custom actions — or simply types a prompt. The result arrives in place: it can be inserted straight into the field the user was typing in, listened to, copied, or saved to the library, and pressing Escape returns them to work. Arc describes the whole sequence as "three seconds from question to answer" and contrasts it with the chatbot route, which takes five steps across two apps and loses context on every hand-off. There is also a chat mode that holds a conversation about the content on screen, so questions, clarifications and further exploration stay anchored to the document in front of the user. Privacy is treated as a condition of the product rather than an add-on. Arc reads the screen only when an action is run — there is no background monitoring and no keylogging — and it disables itself automatically in nearly 400 sensitive apps such as banking, crypto and password-manager tools, with users able to add their own exclusions. Screen content is processed to produce the answer and then discarded rather than stored on Arc's servers, and saved items remain on the device unless the user switches on Google Drive backup. Arc also never runs in the background, requires no account to start, shows no ads and has no expiring trial. A single account and a single subscription carry saved items across platforms, so summaries, answers and flashcard decks follow the user from phone to laptop. The practical uses follow directly from the actions. A reader facing a long article, PDF or email thread can get numbered key points in seconds and then ask follow-up questions about the same page. Someone answering messages can draft, rewrite or correct a reply in the right tone without leaving Gmail, WhatsApp or Slack. A commuter or someone resting their eyes can have any screen read aloud with automatic language detection. Anyone dealing with logistics can Smart Extract meeting times, addresses, phone numbers or tracking codes from a confirmation message, with each item ready to copy. A student can turn lecture notes or a paper into flashcards and review them in question-and-answer mode. And anyone who repeats the same AI task every day can bind a custom action to a global shortcut and run it on whatever is on screen. Arc is available now on Android, where it runs as a floating sidebar with every feature, and on Mac, where it runs as a Control+Space panel notarized by Apple and requires macOS 14.0 or later on Apple Silicon or Intel. A Windows beta is open, and an iPhone version is in development. The free plan costs nothing forever on every platform and includes seven requests per week on basic features; it can be used as a guest with no account, and Google Sign-In is optional, needed only for cloud backup and community features. Premium removes the limit for power users with unlimited AI summaries, unlimited text-to-speech, AI chat about any screen and workflow automation with custom actions, priced in local currency inside the app, with one subscription covering every platform. Arc's value proposition is narrow and clear: the AI should already be where the work is. By living on top of the screen instead of in a separate tab, it removes the copy-paste loop, keeps the context intact and puts the result back into the app the user never left — free to start on Android and Mac.