What Dia Says About the AI-Powered Future of Web Browsing (Premium)

My recent experiences with Perplexity Comet and Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode were both eye-opening, albeit in different ways. Where Comet is a full-on rethinking of what it means to be a web browser in the AI era, Copilot Mode is still incomplete and more evolutionary. But what about Dia, the new AI-powered web browser from The Browser Company, which previously–and briefly–set this world on fire with Arc. How does that compare?

Here’s what I found out.

? Mac only

The Browser Company revealed its pivot to Dia in December 2024, but the first pre-release version of this browser didn’t appear until this past June. As was the case with Arc, this first version is Mac-only, which dramatically limits its potential audience.

From a user experience perspective, Dia most closely resembles Perplexity Comet, in that it’s a light overhaul of Chromium, as it should be it. But bigger changes are coming: The Browser Company heard loud and clear that the somewhat radical user interface it offers in Arc is too intimidating for mainstream users. But it does plan to bring some key Arc interfaces, including its workspaces/sidebar panes, to Dia in time.

For now, Dia presents a familiar face with light updates to the stock Chromium/Chrome experience. That’s by design to ease the transition. And the result is even more minimalist than what we see with Comet. Which is also fine.

Still, a Windows version would make a big difference here.

?️ The Dia vision

If there’s one issue on which The Browser Company and I align, it’s in the belief that traditional browsers, as we know them today, will die. They’ll be replaced by new apps, which for now we will still call browsers, that are AI-powered and interacted with using natural language. But the key to this vision is important enough that I’m writing about it separately: Webpages will still exist, but AI-powered browsers will interact with their content programmatically.

You can see this in a prototypical way in how Comet today can control webpages, like Google Maps in the example I used. And in how Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode (tried to, in my case) create a price tracker by manipulating multiple websites and services in real-time. But those use cases are akin to AI scraping sites for content. In the future, these interactions will be more sophisticated. Microsoft calls this functionality Actions, and Apple uses the term Intents. With Dia, The Browser Company calls this Skills.

(In case it’s not obvious, this programmability won’t be confined to webpages. Microsoft is adapting Windows 11 to be controlled by AI like this, and Apple and Google are doing similar work in their own platforms. Again, more on this soon.)

? Dia basics

Dia’s Chromium base means it’s easy to get up and running on the new browser. The interface is familiar, the extensions you rely on all work normally, and while The Browser Company tries to hide some Chromium UIs, like Settings, it’s all available if you need it.

But there are bigger differences when compared to traditional browsers. Like Comet and Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode, Dia uses its New tab page to present a suddenly common chatbot interface so you can enter a prompt by typing Cmd + T (Ctrl + T in Windows).

If you used Arc, you may know that one of the more subtle but also biggest changes in that browser was that it overroad the standard Cmd/Ctrl + T shortcut to present a unique command-based interface, similar to Spotlight on the Mac or PowerToys Run in Windows, but within the browser. In Dia, Cmd/Ctrl + T works as expected in that a New tab page displays. But this browser overrides Cmd/Ctrl + L now instead. If you’re on the New tab, there is no Address bar, and so typing this shortcut will instead focus the cursor on the text box in the chat interface. (If you’re looking at a normal webpage, typing Cmd/Ctrl + L will display a floating Address bar.)

When you type on the New tab page, Dia will try to determine what to do based on what you type. This is a basic form of orchestration: If you type, say, thurrott.com and hit Enter, Dia will navigate to that page just like any other web browser. If you type thurrott.com (or whatever else) and pause, you’ll see a drop-down list of recommended actions, which is particularly interesting if you’re currently viewing other pages on that site, as I often do with my own website; this is a subtle hint about a key Dia feature tied to understanding the tabs you have open. (More on this below.)

But if you type a question or something that seems like a prompt, Dia will respond differently. For example, when I type Sonos Era 100 and tap Enter, Google Search results appear. But when I type can you compare the Sonos Era 100 to other similar smart speakers, Dia launches into a chatbot experience as we see with ChatGPT and other AIs.

So there are three possible outcomes here: Direct web navigation, web search, or an AI conversation. And I like that because it’s automatic. With Comet, for example, you can choose between Google (Search) and Perplexity (AI) from the drop-down before tapping Enter. But Dia tries to figure out what’s best–it orchestrates–and it seems to do so pretty well. Not perfectly, as you’ll see. But pretty well.

? Unique Dia features

Because some of the capabilities in Dia are new and unfamiliar, the New tab page also provides some visual hints about its less obvious functionality. As I write this, it displays buttons for “@ Mention tabs”, “Browse skills”, and “Personalize”.

Let’s look at each of these. Plus a related feature called Memory.

? Understanding your tabs

Thanks to its popularity with social media users, many apps now offer an @ Mention (“at mention”) feature as a way to link to people, places, or things. If you’re a OneNote user, this is like creating a link in one note to another note. Or if you’re an Outlook user, you may have used @ Mentions to highlight something for a particular person in a message. (As in “@Paul Thurrott, maybe you could take a closer look at this.”)

Dia brings this capability to browser tabs so you can reference them in your prompts. Here’s a simple example: You’re researching smart speakers, to beat this topic to death, and you have mutliple tabs open, each with information about whatever speakers. Then, you can open a new tab and type @ to get a list of open tabs, which you can select in turn to add them to the chat interface for grounding purposes. (You can also do this by clicking the “Add tabs or files” button if you’re more visual.)

Then you can ask the AI questions about those tabs. For example, after adding two tabs to the chat, I asked it, can you compare these two speakers and explain why I should buy one over the other. And then an AI chat appeared and it slowly reasoned through its response, which I have to say, was impressive.

This summary included two “at a glance” bullet points up top, sections for sound architecture and performance, connectivity and controls, design and dimensions, and home theater roles. This was all nice done, but the next section, “Which Should You Buy?”, provided advice for why I might want one or the other, as I had asked, and it even included a bit about getting two lower-cost Era 100s with a Sonos Sub Mini for less than the cost of a single Era 300, which I found quite interesting (and useful).

?️‍♀️ Skills

The Browser Company maintains a website of Dia skills you should be able to browse with any browser. These skills are basically named shortcuts for interacting with websites and online services, and they can be used to automate tasks and customized (“remixed”) for your specific needs. You can also create your own skills from scratch, which may be a bit daunting in the short term.

Skills have “slash” (“/”) names–like /will-i-regret-buying-this, though many are far less obvious–so that they can be used in prompts. And they run the gamut between very general (as above) and very specific, such as /eli5, which stands for “explain this to me like I’m 5.”

So that’s an interesting. And a good place to start, perhaps.

I tried the prompt /eli5 quantum computing and got Google Search results by default (which I could have predicted from the default button that appeared as I typed). But after trying it again and selecting “Chat” explicitly, Dia came back with a nice summary. And then a fairly detailed description of quantum computing that, I have to say, is pretty good.

You can use skills on the fly, but you can also add them to Dia, which would avert the issue I had above with it defaulting to Google Search. You can also choose which AI model to use with the skill–ChatGPT 4.1 and o3 are the current two choices–and customize its response template.

Dia maintains the list of skills you add to the browser so you can manage them later.

Once you add a skill, Dia will intelligently offer it as you type: Typing / now displays a drop-down with the available skills and a few related options.

To try this in what is perhaps a more obvious way, I navigated to one of my Premium articles, typed Cmd + L to access the Adress bar, and started typing /. The Skills dropdown appeared, so I selected /eli5 and tapped Enter. And that failed mightily. So I returned to the page, opened a new tab, typed /eli5 and then added my Premium article as per the @ Mention method noted above. And that worked fine.

Nice. Maybe a bit confusing. But nice.

?‍♂️ Personalization

Dia offers standard web browser personalization feaures related to the theme, which interface elements appear on screen, and the like. But it also features Dia-specific personalization features, many of which are tied to what the AI knows about you and whether it should personalize its answers based on that information.

The key personalization feature is called Memory. You can seed this Memory with information about you by answering a set of questions like “Who inspires you or shapes your tastes”, “How do you best digest information?” “How do you want Dia to write?” and “What are your preferences for coding?”

I purposefully skipped that. But Memory gets more interesting over time as the AI learns more about you as you just use the browser, like a stalker looking over your shoulder. For exammple, with the smart speaker comparison example I used above, Dia told me that it was now using Memory automatically, and when I clicked the “Answered with Memory” link at the bottom of its answer to my query, it told me the following about myself:

• I am likely involved in the technology industry, possibly as a technology writer or reviewer.
• I am engaged with technology news and reviews.
• I am interested in Microsoft products, Windows, and related hardware and software.

On one level, this feels almost magically prescient, but this is based on the webpages I’ve loaded in the browser, many of which were still sitting there open in other tabs. This includes such things as Gmail and Google Calendar, several social media services, but also various tabs on my own website. Which obviously focuses largely on Microsoft products and services, especially Windows. So not really magic. But still smart.

You can retry any prompt without Memory if needed, which is interesting. And you can disable Memory entirely, though this feels like the reason you use Dia in the first place.

? A few final thoughts, for now

In its current state, Dia is a lot closer to Comet that Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode, meaning it feels more complete and further along. But this makes sense: Like Comet, Dia isn’t made by one of the big three platform makers–Apple, Google, and Microsoft–and it is, instead, a fresh take on what a web browser can become in the AI era. It’s less radical than its predecessor, Arc broswer, which feels smart. And it’s interesting–and a bit curious–that The Browser Company hasn’t implemented a sidebar, which is quite common in other web browsers, AI-enabled or not.

Going forward, I feel like the Dia Skills Gallery is the obvious place to focus, and that this browser’s ability to control webpages and services is key to its future. And present, really: I only gave a few simple examples above, and there is a lot more going on here. But you have to start somewhere. And this feels like a really strong entry as-is.

I just wish there was a Windows version.