AI browsers are starting to move from interesting demos into tools you can actually open during the day. I have been testing Dia Browser for about a week, mostly to see whether it is ready to replace Safari or Chrome, or whether it is just another AI sidebar with a browser wrapped around it.
My short version: I would not tell most people to jump ship yet. But there are a few specific things Dia does well enough that I keep opening it, especially when I want to summarize several pages or quickly answer the question behind a video or article title.
Quick Answer
Dia Browser is most useful right now as a research browser. The standout feature is its AI chat sidebar that can work with the page you are viewing, multiple selected tabs, all open tabs, or tabs from a specific domain. That makes it more helpful than a normal article summarizer when you are comparing information across several sources.
The feature I ended up using the most is Dia's custom prompt system. I created a shortcut prompt that answers the main question in a title first, then gives me a short summary, key points, and any mentioned products or links. For quick article and video checks, that is where Dia started to feel genuinely useful.
What Dia Does Differently
Dia looks like a normal browser at first, but the main difference is the chat button in the top-right corner. Clicking it opens a side panel that feels familiar if you have used ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI assistants.
You can ask it to summarize the page you are on, which is useful but not unusual anymore. A lot of tools can summarize one article. The more interesting part is that Dia can reference multiple open tabs.
Using the @ symbol in the chat box brings up your open tabs. From there, you can choose all tabs, tabs from a specific domain, or individual pages. In my test, I opened multiple articles from sites like The Verge and YouTube, then asked Dia to summarize the related tabs together.
That is the part that clicked for me. If you are researching a topic and have several tabs open, Dia can pull those pages together into one answer instead of making you summarize each one separately.
Single-Page Summaries Are Fine
For a normal article, Dia can summarize the page directly from the sidebar. I tested it on an Apple-related article, asked for a summary, and it returned the basic gist quickly.
That worked, but it did not feel unique by itself. Safari, Chrome extensions, standalone AI tools, and read-it-later apps can all help summarize a single article. If that were the only feature, I would not have much reason to change browsers.
The stronger use case is when you already have several pages open and want one combined view. That is where Dia feels more like a research assistant built into the browser instead of a separate tool you have to copy and paste into.
Multi-Tab Summaries
The multi-tab feature is the best thing I found in Dia during my week of testing. When I used @ in the chat field, Dia showed a list of open tabs and grouped some of them by domain. I could choose all tabs, just The Verge tabs, or a group like YouTube tabs.
After selecting the tabs, I could simply type summary and Dia would look across those pages together. For anyone who researches from multiple sources, that is immediately practical.
This could be useful for comparing news coverage, checking several product pages, reviewing market or stock-related information from multiple sites, or quickly pulling together notes from a set of open articles.
The important point is that Dia is not just summarizing one page at a time. It understands the browsing session as context, and that is where AI inside a browser starts to make more sense.
Custom Prompts
The feature that surprised me was Dia's custom prompts, shown as shortcuts in the chat bar. I created one called /sum for quick article and video summaries.
My prompt is designed around how I actually browse. A lot of videos and articles are built around a hook or question. Sometimes I am curious about the answer, but I do not want to watch a full video or read the whole article just to find it.
The prompt tells Dia that if the title is a question, answer it directly and clearly in the first sentence. Then it writes a short two-to-three-line summary, adds concise bullet points with key takeaways, steps, or insights, and includes product names and links when products are mentioned.
That made Dia much more useful for me. Instead of asking a fresh question every time, I can hit /sum, submit it, and get the kind of answer I actually want.
How I Used It With YouTube
I tested the custom summary prompt on YouTube videos with question-style titles. One example was a Kitchen Nightmares video asking whether the owner cared about his business.
Dia answered the question first: at the start of the episode, the owner did not seem to truly care about the business, but by the end he regained some passion and commitment. Then it gave a short summary of the episode and key points.
That is exactly the kind of use case where this works. I was not trying to replace watching something I cared about. I was trying to decide whether the video answered the question I was curious about.
I also tried the same prompt on a ChatGPT-related article or video title that was not phrased as a question. In that case, Dia did not have a question to answer first, so the useful part was the summary, key points, and mentioned products.
Where Dia Falls Short
The biggest issue for me is that Dia is not ready to replace Safari in my day-to-day setup. I am deep enough in the Apple ecosystem that browser switching is not just about whether the AI features are good.
Dia did not import Safari bookmarks in my testing, which is annoying if Safari is your main browser. It seems more comfortable for Chrome users because it supports Chrome extensions and appears to make Chrome-based onboarding easier.
I installed 1Password as my only extension during this test, and Chrome extension support is a big plus. But Safari users still have more friction, especially if bookmarks and Reading List are part of their daily workflow.
Reading List matters to me. I save a lot of things to read later, and that habit does not move cleanly into Dia right now. That is one of the same reasons I do not use Chrome as much.
Pricing Question
Dia was still in beta while I was testing it, and I was able to get access pretty quickly. The pricing I had heard was around $20 per month when the paid version arrives.
At that price, I am not sure Dia is polished enough yet for most people, especially if they are happy with Safari or Chrome. The AI features are interesting and useful in specific moments, but replacing a main browser is a bigger ask.
For Chrome users who already live in that extension ecosystem, Dia may be easier to try. For Apple users who depend on Safari bookmarks, iCloud syncing, and Reading List, the switch is harder to justify.
Dia vs Perplexity Comet
I am also on the waitlist for Perplexity's Comet browser, so I cannot compare them from hands-on use yet. But the difference I am watching is the type of work each browser is trying to do.
Dia feels more focused on research, summaries, and understanding the pages and tabs you already have open.
Comet, from what I have heard, is aiming more at action. The idea is that it could browse a site, click buttons, fill forms, or potentially do something like search Amazon and place an order for you.
That is powerful, but also a little uncomfortable. I still want to test it because I want to understand what is possible, even if I do not end up using that kind of automation every day.
Key Takeaways
- Dia Browser is not something I would recommend as a full Safari or Chrome replacement yet.
- The best Dia feature I tested is multi-tab AI summaries using the @ tab selector.
- Custom prompts make Dia much more practical because you can reuse the same summary format instead of typing instructions every time.
- Dia worked well for quickly answering question-style article or video titles and pulling key points from the content.
- Chrome users may have an easier time trying Dia because it supports Chrome extensions.
- Safari users may feel more friction because Safari bookmark import and Reading List-style workflows are still pain points.
Watch the Video
The video above for the full walkthrough of Dia Browser in action, including the sidebar chat, multi-tab summaries, and the custom /sum prompt I used during testing.
