Software Update: Tor Browser 9.0

Version 9.0 of Tor Browser has been released. Tor stands for The Onion Router and is a network that can be used to surf the Internet fairly anonymously. All users’ tcp traffic is routed through various Tor routers, after which it is virtually impossible for the receiver to trace who the original sender was. This information is still present within the Tor network, so that answers, of course also via the system of routers, eventually arrive at the right place. The changelog for this release looks like this:

New Release: Tor Browser 9.0

Tor Browser 9.0 is the first stable release based on Firefox 68 ESR and contains a number of updates to other components as well (including Tor to 0.4.1.6 and OpenSSL to 1.1.1d for desktop versions and Tor to 0.4.1.5 for Android).

In addition to all the needed patch rebasing and toolchain updates, we made big improvements to make Tor Browser work better for you.

We want everyone in the world to be able to enjoy the privacy and freedom online Tor provides, and that’s why over the past couple years, we’ve been working hard to boost our UX and localization efforts, with the biggest gains first visible in Tor Browser 8.0.

In Tor Browser 9.0, we continue to build upon those efforts with sleeker integration and additional localization support.

Goodbye, Onion Button

We want your experience using Tor to be fully integrated within the browser so how you use Tor is more intuitive. That’s why now, rather than using the onion button that was in the toolbar, you can see your path through the Tor network and request a New Circuit through the Tor network in [i] on the URL bar.

Hello, New Identity Button

Instead of going into the onion button to request a New Identity, we’ve made this important feature easier to access by giving it its own button in the toolbar.

You can also request a New Identity, and a New Circuit, from within the [=] menu on the toolbar.

Torbutton and Tor Launcher Integration

Now that both extensions are tightly integrated into Tor Browser, they’ll no longer be found on the about:addons page.

We redesigned the bridge and proxy configuration dialogs and include them directly into the browser’s preference settings as well.

Rather than being a submenu behind the onion button, Tor Network Settings, including the ability to fetch bridges to bypass censorship where Tor is blocked, are easier to access on about:preferences#tor.

Better Localization Support

If we want all people around the world to be able to use our software, then we need to make sure it’s speaking their language. Since 8.0, Tor Browser has been available in 25 languages. Today, we add support for two additional languages: Macedonian (mk) and Romanian (ro), bringing the number of supported languages ​​to 27.

We also fixed bugs in our previously shipped localized bundles (such as ar and ko).

Many thanks to everyone who helped with these, in particular to our translators.

Known Issue

As usual when preparing Tor Browser releases, we verified that the build is bit-for-bit reproducible. While we managed to get two matching builds, we found that in some occasions the builds differ (we found this happening on the Linux i686 and macOS bundle). We are still investigating the cause of this issue to fix it.