Why people look for an alternative
Arc's Easels are one of the clearest examples of a browser turning web content into a visual canvas. Arc lets users capture pieces of pages and place them on an Easel alongside notes, drawings and images. Its help center currently documents Easel creation and editing on Arc for macOS, while Easels can be viewed from other browsers.
That leaves a specific need for people who work primarily in Chrome: keeping useful pieces of websites in one visual place without changing their browser workflow.
Arc Easels and Kaptr.me are not the same product
The overlap is visual collection. The emphasis is different. Arc Easels are a broader creative canvas inside Arc, while Kaptr.me is designed around repeatable monitoring and dashboard workflows: capture a region, place it in a board, keep the context, refresh it later and optionally preserve history.
Arc also has its own Live Capture concept. So the useful question is not “which one has screenshots?” but rather “where do you want the workflow to live, and what do you want to do with the captured region afterwards?”
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Workflow | Arc Easels | Kaptr.me |
|---|---|---|
| Primary environment | Arc browser; Easel creation/editing documented for macOS | Chrome extension + Kaptr.me web app |
| Capture part of a page | Yes | Yes, with Capture Zone selection |
| Visual canvas | Yes | Yes, dashboard/whiteboard workspace |
| Refresh-oriented workflow | Live Capture exists inside Arc | Snapshots are designed to be refreshed in place and can keep history depending on the plan |
| Protected sources | Uses the browsing context in Arc | Local refresh uses the signed-in session of the browser performing the refresh |
| Sharing | Easels can be shared and viewed in browsers | Private, account-restricted Shared, and Public dashboard modes |
The Kaptr.me workflow in Chrome
- Open the page you already use.A price, stock level, analytics panel, support queue, BI report or any other visual source.
- Capture only the region that matters.Use the extension's Capture Zone mode and drag across the useful area.
- Send it to the right dashboard.A “Price Watch”, marketing board, personal cockpit or client report can each keep their own context.
- Refresh instead of rebuilding.The visual object stays in place while the underlying capture can be updated.
This is especially useful when the source already has a good visual presentation and you do not want to recreate it through an API, spreadsheet or custom integration.
Which one fits your use case?
Choose Arc Easels if you already live in Arc on macOS and want a broad creative canvas tightly integrated with that browser. Choose Kaptr.me if you want the workflow in Chrome and your main goal is to build refreshable visual dashboards from websites you repeatedly check.
If you want to see the capture interaction before installing anything, open the Kaptr.me extension page. For examples of boards that benefit from this workflow, browse Use cases.
Reference: Arc's current Easel behavior is described in The Browser Company's official “Easels: Capture & Create” documentation.