How to Use Dia: The Beginner's Guide (First Chat, Tab Mentions, Skills, and the Privacy Line)

CodexFuse Team · 2026-10-28T19:29:00.338Z · 16 min read

Learning how to use Dia is mostly about learning one new habit: in Dia, the browser itself can answer questions about the pages you already have open. Dia is the AI-native browser from The Browser Company, the team behind Arc, and it puts a chat assistant in the address bar, in a sidebar, and across your tabs. This Dia browser tutorial walks you through the whole first-use system in order: installing Dia on Mac or Windows, importing your bookmarks and passwords, chatting from the address bar, mentioning tabs with @, saving your first Skill, organizing work with Profiles and Split view, and setting the privacy controls before you hand the browser your workday.

If you are coming from Chrome, the move is smaller than it looks. Dia is built on Chromium, so the pages, passwords, and extensions you already use mostly carry over. Our Google Chrome beginner guide covers the tab and extension habits that transfer directly — Dia changes where the assistant lives, not how the web itself works.

What is Dia, and how is it different from a normal browser?

Dia is an AI-native web browser from The Browser Company in which the address bar doubles as a chat interface: you can type a web address to navigate, or ask a question and get an answer grounded in your open tabs, with the assistant able to act across pages instead of sitting in a separate tab. A normal browser shows you pages and leaves the thinking to you; Dia adds an assistant that reads the pages you point it at, compares them, summarizes them, and — through Skills — repeats multi-step jobs on command.

Two truths explain most of Dia's design. First, Dia is the successor to Arc, not a side project: Arc is on maintenance mode while The Browser Company puts its effort into Dia, so Arc users are the people Dia is most obviously built for. Second, the address bar routes questions to chat automatically, so plain navigation and chat share one box — beginners have to learn when Dia is navigating and when it is answering, which is the one genuinely new skill in this guide. Dia belongs to the new category of AI browsers, where the assistant is built into the browser itself rather than living on a website you visit.

How do I download and install Dia?

Download Dia only from the official site, diabrowser.com, and install it like any other desktop browser: download the installer for your system, run it, and sign in when setup asks you to. Dia's own homepage now lists availability for macOS and Windows, which is a real change from its Mac-only beta days — the Windows version reached v1.0 on October 6, 2026, according to the vendor changelog reported by WindowsForum.

1. Go to diabrowser.com and download the installer for your system — macOS or Windows. Never install Dia from an unofficial download mirror: a browser holds your logins and synced history, so the official site is the only safe source.
2. On a Mac, check that you meet the system bar first: Dia's beta required macOS 14 or later on an Apple silicon Mac (M1 or newer), and that requirement still shapes who can install it. Open the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, and confirm both the macOS version and the chip before you download.
3. Run the installer, then open Dia and create an account or sign in when setup prompts you. On Windows, the onboarding leans toward a work email address and Atlassian sign-in, because The Browser Company is now part of Atlassian.
4. Work through the first-run screens without rushing them: this is where Dia offers to import your data, set your accent color, and present the privacy defaults. You can change all of these later, but setting them deliberately now saves a confused first week.
5. Read any installer notice on Windows before you click past it. PiunikaWeb's hands-on report of the Windows launch found a warning in the installer describing an early, untested build not yet recommended for daily web use — so treat the Windows build as newer and less settled than the Mac build, and keep your old browser installed as a backup until Dia has proven itself on your machine.

There is no Linux build and no mobile version of Dia: coverage of the current lineup describes it as macOS and Windows only. If your daily browsing happens on a phone or a Linux machine, Dia cannot be your everywhere browser yet.

How do I import my stuff from Chrome or Arc?

Import during setup by choosing your old browser when Dia offers it, and Dia will bring over your bookmarks, passwords, history, and extensions in one pass — you do not have to rebuild your browsing setup from scratch. The beta offered imports from Chrome, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and Edge, and the current Windows onboarding offers the same one-go migration from browsers such as Chrome or Edge, including open tabs.

Arc users get a first-party migration path that no other browser offers, because Dia is Arc's official successor. Passwords, bookmarks, extensions, and browsing history carry over; Arc Spaces become Dia Profiles, Arc Folders become Tab Groups, and pinned tabs and favorites keep their custom names. You can import from Arc during Dia's setup or later from Dia's import menu, but the migration window has an end date: the Arc farewell notice sets December 22, 2026 as the cutoff, so Arc users who plan to move should not leave it until the last week.

If you do not plan to move, save your Arc tabs first. Arc's export options let you save your tabs as a list of links before the same December 22, 2026 date, so nothing you care about is trapped in a browser that is no longer being developed.

How do I chat with Dia from the address bar?

Chatting with Dia starts in the place you already type: click the address bar, type your question, and Dia answers instead of searching. Dia routes question-style queries to chat automatically — if your query is phrased as a question, it goes straight to the assistant — and the new-tab screen itself is a large bar that works as a search box, address bar, and chat box in one.

1. Open a new tab and type a plain question in the address bar, for example: "What does this article say about remote work?" while the article is open.
2. Read the answer, then check it against the page. Dia answers from the pages you give it, but every AI answer can misread a detail — the habit that matters is verifying the one fact you plan to act on.
3. To navigate instead of chatting, type a web address or a short search phrase rather than a question. Learning this toggle — question for chat, address or keyword for navigation — is the skill that stops the address bar feeling unpredictable.
4. To ask about the page you are on without leaving it, open Dia's chat from the sidebar. The inline chat carries the current page's content as context, so you can ask follow-ups like "summarize this in three bullets" without pasting anything.
5. When a chat answer links to a page, click it: Dia renders linked pages inline in the conversation, so you can read the source without breaking the flow of the chat or opening a pile of new tabs.

Dia's chat is genuinely useful for reading and comparing, and genuinely risky for acting. A good rule for any AI browser, and for Dia in particular, is to let it read, summarize, and compare as much as you like, but to take over yourself the moment it wants to click buy, send, or submit — and to review anything it fills in before it goes out. Our ChatGPT beginner guide covers the same verify-before-you-act habit for standalone chatbots, and it applies word for word inside a browser.

How do I mention tabs with @?

Mentioning tabs with @ is how you tell Dia exactly which pages to use: type @ followed by a tab's name in the chat, and Dia pulls that tab's content into the conversation as context. Without a mention, Dia works from the current page; with mentions, it can compare, combine, and summarize across everything you point it at.

1. Open the two or three pages you want to work with — for example, three product pages you are choosing between, or a document and the email thread about it.
2. In Dia's chat, type @ and pick the tab you want from the list. You can mention a single tab, or use @all open tabs to pull in everything you have open — though a narrow set gives a sharper answer than a wide one.
3. Ask a bounded question with named fields, such as: "Compare these three proposals by owner, deadline, stated cost, and unresolved decision." Named fields force a comparable answer; a vague "what do you think?" gets a vague reply.
4. Check the answer against the source tabs before you use it, especially for numbers, dates, and names. The workflow guides that use Dia daily all repeat the same rule: keep the source set narrow when accuracy matters, and verify the result against the original pages.

The same technique powers Dia's meeting help. Its Better Meetings feature is designed to pull up the relevant pages, agenda, notes, and documents for a call automatically — but the reliable habit is still to review that material yourself before the meeting starts: confirm the owner, the date, the participant list, and anything the summary marks as uncertain.

What are Dia Skills, and how do I save one?

Dia Skills are reusable, agentic prompts: small saved routines that carry out a multi-step job — writing, summarizing, coding, or shopping — when you invoke them by name, instead of you retyping the same long instruction every time. Think of a Skill as a saved command for a job you do every week, not as a separate app.

1. Find a job you repeat. A daily briefing is the classic first Skill: gather updates from across your tools, then summarize them into one short list.
2. Write the Skill as a prompt with a name and a slash shortcut, for example /start-day, describing exactly what to gather and what shape the answer should take.
3. Save it in Dia, then invoke it by typing its slash name in chat — /start-day — whenever you want that job done. Dia runs the routine against the tabs and connected tools you have given it.
4. Start with one Skill and use it for a week before building more. A library of ten Skills you never invoke is clutter; one Skill that saves you ten minutes every morning is the whole point.

Skills are also where Dia's work-tool connections pay off. If you connect tools such as Slack or Outlook, Dia can answer with your own work context in mind — tomorrow's weather and the time you agreed to meet a client can come from the same interface. Connect only the tools a Skill actually needs, and keep the source set narrow: the quality of a Dia answer depends on the pages and connected context you deliberately make available.

How do I organize tabs with Profiles, Tab Groups, and Split view?

Organize Dia with three layers, from broadest to narrowest: Profiles separate whole lives (work and personal, with their own logins), Tab Groups bundle the tabs of one task, and Split view shows two pages side by side when you need to read a source beside a working document. Learning those three layers is what stops Dia turning into the same tab pile you left behind in Chrome.

Start with one profile per life, not one per project — a work profile and a personal profile cover most people. Inside a profile, group tabs by task and name the group for the task, so resuming work means reopening one named group instead of hunting through thirty tabs. When you need to compare or copy between two pages, put them in Split view rather than flipping back and forth; that side-by-side habit is the one Arc users missed most, and it is why the vertical tab list was brought back into Dia's left sidebar after users asked for it.

What does Dia cost?

Dia itself is a free download for macOS and Windows, and its basic browser features — Profiles, tab groups, split view, ad and tracker blocking, and sync — are free. The AI features sit on paid tiers above the free browser, with a 14-day trial of the top tier offered without a credit card.

Check the price on diabrowser.com before you pay for anything, because third-party coverage of the official pricing page in October 2026 found two different figures for the same middle tier — a pricing card showing one monthly price and a feature list showing another. Treat any single price quoted in a guide, including this one, as unconfirmed until Dia's own pricing page agrees with itself. The safe order is: use the free browser first, try the trial only when you have a real week of AI work to test it against, and pay only if the trial week proves the assistant earns its place.

How do I set Dia's privacy line?

Set Dia's privacy line in Settings, under Privacy, before you connect work tools or ask it about sensitive pages. Dia's own homepage states the headline promises plainly: your data is never sold or used to build ad profiles, Sync is end-to-end encrypted, and you control whether Dia remembers your preferences and which tools connect to your workflow. The on-page controls show the defaults: block trackers on, block ads on, personalize new chats on, memory on, and share content data off.

1. Open Settings, then Privacy, and read every toggle before you change one. Decide deliberately about Memory (whether Dia remembers your preferences), personalized chats, tracker blocking, ad blocking, and content-data sharing.
2. Keep ad blocking and tracker blocking on unless a site you trust breaks without them. These were pre-checked during Dia's beta setup, and they are the simplest privacy win in the browser.
3. Leave content-data sharing off unless you have a specific reason to turn it on. Sharing off is the default that keeps your page content out of broader data use.
4. Decide about Memory separately from everything else. Memory is what makes Dia feel personal across days, and it is also the setting that most deserves a conscious yes or no, not a default you never noticed.
5. Connect work tools one at a time, only when a Skill or a task actually needs them. Every connected tool widens what the assistant can see, so the narrowest connection that gets the job done is the right one.

One beta-era detail is worth knowing but not worth quoting as current policy: at its June 2025 beta launch, Dia's chat was described as not tying usage to your account and deleting the data after 30 days. Beta promises are not current promises, so check the privacy settings and policy in the build you actually install rather than trusting launch coverage. Our Brave beginner guide covers the same settings-first approach for a privacy-first browser, and the habit transfers: set the line first, then browse.

Dia vs Arc vs Chrome: which one should a beginner pick?

Pick Dia if you want an AI assistant inside the browser and you are starting fresh or moving from Arc; pick Chrome if you want the most settled, most supported browser and do not care about a built-in assistant. Arc itself is no longer the pick for a new user, because it is on maintenance mode while its maker builds Dia.

If you are torn between Dia and Chrome's own AI layer, read our Google Chrome beginner guide for what Gemini in Chrome actually does, and compare it with Dia's approach here: Chrome keeps the assistant as a layer you can ignore, while Dia makes the assistant the interface itself. Beginners who like trying new tools usually enjoy Dia; beginners who want the browser to stay out of the way usually prefer Chrome. Our Google Gemini beginner guide covers the standalone Gemini side of that comparison, so you can judge the assistant on its own before judging the browser around it.

What are Dia's limits and rough edges?

Dia's limits are the honest part of this guide, and they decide whether it should be your main browser yet. The Windows build is the newest and least settled part of the product, with installer warnings reported at launch — keep Chrome installed as a backup while you evaluate it. There is no Linux or mobile version, so Dia cannot follow you to every device. The browser launched simple by design, and early coverage noted how few settings there were to tweak compared with a traditional browser, so power users who love deep customization may find Dia thin. And the assistant itself needs the same discipline as every AI tool: it can misread a page, so verify the one fact you plan to act on before you act on it.

None of that makes Dia a bad choice — it makes it a new choice. Use it as your main browser for a week, with Chrome still installed, and judge it on one question: by day three, does the assistant earn its place in your actual work, or do you keep reaching for the old browser? A week of real use answers that better than any review, including this one.

Sources

Dia's official homepage (diabrowser.com, fetched October 28, 2026): macOS and Windows availability; privacy promises — data never sold or used for ad profiles, end-to-end encrypted Sync, user control over Memory and tool connections; default toggles — block trackers on, block ads on, share content data off. WindowsForum, "Dia AI Browser Arrives on Windows" (October 2026): vendor changelog dates the Windows v1.0 release to October 6, 2026; Dia confirmed a fall 2026 Windows launch in July 2026 with weekly progress updates. PiunikaWeb, "Dia, the AI-powered browser from the makers of Arc, is now available on Windows" (October 7, 2026): hands-on Windows install — work-email onboarding, one-go migration of tabs, passwords, bookmarks, and extensions from Chrome or Edge, and the installer's early-build warning. Unite.ai, "The Browser Company Will Sunset Arc and Shift Focus to Dia" (October 2026): Arc-to-Dia import mapping — passwords, bookmarks, extensions, history, Spaces to Profiles, Folders to Tab Groups — importable during setup or later, before December 22, 2026; Dia a free download for macOS and Windows. Pandromeda, "Arc Browser Alternatives [2026]: Dia vs Zen vs Vivaldi" (October 2026): macOS and Windows only, no Linux or mobile build; free basic browser tier, paid AI tiers, 14-day Better Days trial with no card required, and the conflicting Better Answers figures on Dia's official pricing page. Ghacks, "Dia Browser: Download Windows, Linux version with AI features" (June 12, 2025, updated February 23, 2026): beta launch details — import from Chrome, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and Edge; macOS 14+ and Apple silicon M1 or newer; ad and tracker blocking pre-checked; beta-era chat data handling (not tied to account, deleted after 30 days); address bar doubling as chat; Skills as agentic AIs you can create. fldr.zip, "Dia – an early review" (2026): Arc on maintenance mode, Dia as The Browser Company's AI-native successor; question-phrased queries routed directly to chat; base chat model at review time. blog.planetargon.com, "Solving Workflow Chaos with Dia Browser" (2026): /start-day Skill workflow and @all open tabs usage. AnyGen, "Dia Browser: Features, Price & Setup" (August 2026): profile-per-task workflow, Split view for reading a source beside a working document, bounded-question technique. eyerys.com, "From Sidebar To Inline Browsing, Dia Uses Tabs To Be An 'AI-Powered Internet Navigator'" (2026): vertical tabs returning to Dia's left sidebar; inline browsing of chat links from July 10, 2025.

Frequently asked questions

Is Dia free?

Yes, Dia is a free download for macOS and Windows, and its basic browser features are free. The AI features sit on paid tiers above the free browser, with a 14-day trial of the top tier offered without a credit card — check diabrowser.com's pricing page at install time, because third-party coverage found conflicting figures for the middle tier there.

Does Dia work on Windows?

Yes. Dia launched as a Mac-only beta in June 2025, opened to all Mac users in October 2025, and reached Windows with a v1.0 release on October 6, 2026. Dia's homepage now lists macOS and Windows. The Windows build is newer and less settled than the Mac build, so keep your old browser installed while you evaluate it.

Is Dia better than Arc?

For a new user, yes — Arc is on maintenance mode while The Browser Company develops Dia, and Dia is Arc's official successor with a first-party import path. For an existing Arc user, the question is timing, not quality: import before the December 22, 2026 cutoff, and expect a simpler browser with AI built in rather than Arc's deeper customization.

Do I have to leave Chrome to try Dia?

No. Dia imports your bookmarks, passwords, history, and extensions from Chrome, and you can keep Chrome installed as a backup while you try Dia for a week. Dia is Chromium-based, so the pages and extensions you rely on mostly carry over.

Does Dia use my browsing data for ads or training?

Dia's homepage states that your data is never sold or used to build ad profiles, that Sync is end-to-end encrypted, and that you control Memory and tool connections. Keep ad and tracker blocking on and content-data sharing off in Settings under Privacy, and re-check those settings in the build you install, since beta-era privacy descriptions are not a substitute for current settings.