How to Use Dia Browser for AI-Assisted Web Browsing
Dia Browser is a free-to-use Chromium browser built by The Browser Company that adds an AI assistant directly beside your tabs. You download it for macOS or Windows, sign in, then type into the chat bar to summarize pages, compare tabs, or draft text without leaving the browser.
What is Dia Browser?
Dia is the follow-up to Arc from The Browser Company. Where Arc experimented with a rebuilt sidebar, Dia Browser keeps a fairly normal tab strip and spends its energy on a chat panel that can read whatever page you have open.
It runs on Chromium, so Chrome extensions mostly work. It targets macOS 14+ and Windows 11 first. The company shipped the public beta in 2025 and has been pushing weekly updates since.
Is Dia Browser free?
Yes, for now. Dia Browser is free to download after leaving invite-only beta, with a paid tier mentioned for advanced AI usage. No hard number has been published for the eventual cap, which is worth watching if you plan to use it all day.
How do you install Dia Browser?
- Open the Dia download page and pick your platform (macOS or Windows).
- Run the .dmg or .exe and move the app into Applications.
- Launch Dia Browser, then import bookmarks and passwords from Chrome or Safari when prompted.
- Sign in with an email address to turn on the AI features.
Import takes a minute and preserves folders. Skip it and you can still import later from Settings.
How do you chat with a page in Dia Browser?
Open any article, then click the chat field at the bottom of the window or press the shortcut. The assistant reads the active tab as context.
Prompts I actually run: “Summarize this in 5 bullets”, “What does this pricing page charge per seat?”, and “Draft a reply to this email thread in the other tab”. Dia Browser can pull from several open tabs at once, which is the part that beats a normal sidebar chatbot. You still have to select which tabs are in scope, so it does not silently read your whole session.
What does Dia Browser do well, and where does it fall short?
Good fit: people who live in a browser all day and juggle ten tabs of research. The multi-tab context is genuinely faster than copying text into ChatGPT.
Weak fit: anyone on Linux, and anyone who needs strict enterprise data controls. AI requests go to a cloud model, so do not paste anything confidential into the chat. It also still feels like a beta in places — a few extensions misbehave, and I hit one tab-restore bug after a crash.
Quick Summary
- Dia Browser is a free Chromium browser from The Browser Company with an AI panel beside your tabs.
- It supports macOS and Windows; Linux is not available.
- The standout feature is chatting across multiple open tabs at once.
- AI features need a sign-in and send page context to a cloud model.
- Best for heavy browser users doing research; skip it for air-gapped work.
