Horse — The Organized Browser

Horse came up on my Twitter (X) feed after the news that the folks behind Arc were pivoting to build another browser. Seems pretty interesting and like a lightweight version of Arc that could be a good alternative for power users.

thanks for hunting horse @gabe <3 hello product hunt! i’m pascal pixel, designer and coding person. last time i was here, i launched a clock, but this time i really went all in… i built a browser! two years ago i met someone who was building a command palette extension for chrome because, as he put it, “tabs suck”. naturally, i asked, “why not just fix tabs?” and he replied, “pfff, how can anyone fix tabs?” …and that's when a possible solution, trails, hit me like lightning i couldn’t explain it to anyone no matter how hard i tried (still difficult), so i just started building an mvp. i honestly thought it’d take two months to pull off and launch on product hunt, but here we are two years later i'm mostly building it for myself, but turns out a whole bunch of other people like it too. so that's really rewarding and it feels like i'm making something useful for others [humblebrag 9000]

I've used Horse for the last 4 months, switching over from Arc (before it was cool 😂). I switched because (1) I love vertical tabs (2) For all the shiny features of Arc, I found the spaces more overwhelming than they gave me a feeling of organisation and being in control. Arc is a lot of fun little ideas put together but eventually it felt like less than the sum of its parts. I really wanted a simple browser where I can can organise myself around my projects easily so I can be more intentional, and Horse 🐴 is that for me. It's early days so it doesn't do everything, and isn't for everyone. I know Pascal has a million comments asking for full chrome extension support to come sooner! But if you are borderline ADHD or someone who saves a lot of pages and wants to get their projects done, I really recommend it. Excited to see where this ends up 🚀

I support anyone who takes the utterly infinitely complex task of trying to solve tab & link management :) I saw this on Twitter the other day as well! Love the concept of Trails, definitely a unique way to manage the browsing experience. But on it's own I think it still leaves a lot of things to be solved. Curious to see how it develops overtime. All the best @pascalpixel

I love the concept btw. Finally we have folders organized as browsing history :) Exciting way to brwse!

All this time we were told that browsers needed to be made by huge teams with millions of $ in VC funded, and the legions of influencer hype that comes with it – but then I used Horse and realized that was a lie. Lol but seriously, Horse is a great browser that really excels if you're the kind of person that thinks of your tabs as series of web of pages grouped around research themes (aka Trails). In this case 'research' doesn't only mean scholorly academia, but also tasks like buying the perfect blender, or figuring the error message on some code that won't compile means.

Pascal - what a lovely video. I'm totally hooked with your story and your product now! Question: does it integrate into Arc somehow? I'm liking many of its feature but would want to exchange the sidebar with yours. Would that be somehow possible?

Amazing work @pascalpixel Also, respect the Mustache! 🫡 If I may so ask you - industrial/IxD designer and career product pro here - I would be pleasantly surprised if you acquired a patent on Trails.. have you? I would guess it would be super hard to secure one for the proposed interface workflow that you built into Horse. What would stop other browsers from simply Sherlocking the feature into their own?

Wow, there's a saying in russian which goes "Да ты на коне!" which translates literally as you're on a horse but it means that you're having a streak of success lol Congrats on the launch! Keychain/login is the biggest block for me to start using it for some of the usecases but I'm looking closely at where horse can get to with all this attention and success?! Maybe we'll see nested tabs in arc and horse gets sold to apple?

I know Pascal well and he's an awesome dude, that cares a lot about the things he makes. He has a relentless focus on delivering quality. Keep it going homie.

When my new Mac mini arrives Horse will be the only browser on it

This came on my X feed too, but I think the founder did not wanted to launch on Product Hunt. Did you launch this with his consent @gabe

I wonder, how this compares to Tree Style Tab or other similar extensions? And what was the thought process of forking Chromium as opposed to creating a chrome extension for this?

Very cool. For my workflow, I'd like to user horse, but I'd like to identify websites NOT to track. Some of the websites I use are applications (like an LMS and SIS) and they will generate lots of history when I don't actually care about the history.

I like the idea and simplicity. It's also brave to launch a new browser in a market that has been won by Arc. I totally respect this and would consider it as a backup browser - because to be honest, I use Arc more as a personal workspace and less to dive into topics or really browse the web. Then I realized, that this won't work for me either because I do all my research and browsing on my iPad after I close my Mac to end my work day. So as much as I like the idea, it's the wrong platform for me. Browsing/Research = iPad for me.

I swear I was looking for a browser like this! Is it heavier than Arc?

Wow this looks clean and simple. I would assume the previously nested pages aren't cached? Which would probably make reloading a tad slower? But significantly reduce the memory load on device?

Just wanted to say, been trying this for the last few days and it's great. It's so much easier to follow a trail of thought, rather than having a million tabs open, going to make a cup of coffee, losing your place and then closing them all in frustration. One idea: I'd love if the notes used markdown. For example, being able to have a place to add todos as you are researching a project, or just generally formatting your notes would be really useful.

Great idea!!! congrats! i suffer the same problem, one thing thou, i would of name it "trails"... why did horse came up as a name? would love to hear the stroy

The sidebar gives me a sense of "order". I love to organize my documents in this way! Horse reminds me of Zotero, which also has a sidebar to help me keep everything right in place. Congrats on the launch!