I run a small hosting company, Hostao, and a handful of SaaS products. That means a lot of accounts. For years my browser was where all of that work lived: one space per company, the right Gmail, Stripe and Cloudflare already signed in, and no chance of the wrong one sneaking into the wrong window.
For me that browser was Arc. When its makers announced that Arc stops working on 22 December, I did what a lot of people did: I looked at the alternatives. Most of them wanted one of three things. An account. A pivot to AI everywhere. Or a profile switcher that makes you log out and back in all day. I didn't want any of those. I wanted my spaces back, and less noise.
So we built Tao Browser by Hostao®.
What I actually needed
The core idea is small. Every company, client or project gets its own space, and every space has its own cookies and logins. Two Google Workspace accounts sit side by side without colliding. Under the hood each space is backed by its own WebKit website data store, so this is real separation, not a tab group with a colour.
Around that I added the things I kept wishing for:
- Face ID / Touch ID lock for a single tab, a whole space or the app. Handy when you share your screen with payroll open.
- Ads and trackers blocked on the device, using EasyList and EasyPrivacy compiled to WebKit content-blocker rules. Nothing leaves your machine for this.
- No account, no analytics, no crash reporting. The App Store privacy label says "Data Not Collected".
- On Mac: a ⌘K command bar, import from Arc, and Client Mode, which hides other tab titles while you screen-share.
- Wrong-Account Guard: it compares the Gmail or Outlook account label with the space you're in and warns you before you hit send from the wrong company's mailbox. That one exists because I nearly did it once.
Why WebKit and not Chromium
A small team can't safely maintain a Chromium fork on a four-week security cycle. Tao uses Apple's WebKit, so Apple ships the engine security fixes with the OS and we own only the shell. A side effect is size: the Mac app is a download of about 7 MB.
Honest limits
I'd rather you hear these from me:
- Tao is proprietary. It isn't open source. The third-party pieces we use, like EasyList and Sparkle, are listed with their licences on the site.
- Extension support in WebKit is narrow. On Mac we ship a small reviewed set (uBlock Origin Lite, Dark Reader, Bitwarden), not the Chrome Web Store.
- There's no sync between devices yet. Everything stays on your device.
- There is no Windows or Android version today. They're planned, with no dates.
- The Mac app is a free beta you download directly. The Mac App Store version is in review.
iPhone and iPad are on the App Store now, free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.
Why free?
Hostao funds it. The browser isn't the product: no ads, no data. I'd rather have a tool I trust on my own machine than another service to log into.
A day with it
Here is what my morning looks like now. Mail for Hostao opens in the Hostao space, already signed in. A client's Google Workspace sits in its own space next to it, with a different account and no collision. When I share my screen on a call, I switch on Client Mode and the other tab titles disappear, so nobody sees a dashboard they shouldn't. If I step away, the payroll space is locked behind Face ID or Touch ID.
None of this is exotic. It's the boring part of running several companies from one machine, and it's the part most browsers treat as an afterthought. Browsers are great at "one person, one profile". They're less great at "one person, six businesses, two of them with the same Gmail domain".
What I'd like to hear
We're a small team and the first people to use Tao will shape it more than any roadmap. Three questions I'd love answers to:
- Which mail or SaaS setups does the Wrong-Account Guard miss?
- Which Arc features did you rely on that we haven't covered?
- Would a shared-spaces feature for small teams matter to you, or is local-only exactly what you want?
Try it, tell us what's missing
You can get Tao Browser at tao.hostao.com. We're on Product Hunt today and we'd love your feedback: producthunt.com/posts/tao-browser.
If you juggle several company accounts, tell me which setups it gets wrong, which mail clients the guard misses, and what would make you switch for good. I read every reply.
Tao Browser is a trademark of Hostao L.L.C. Hostao® is a registered trademark of Hostao L.L.C.
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