Summary
Tor Browser is designed to bypass internet censorship on the network or internet service provider (ISP) level, but some of its workarounds can be complicated. The Connection Assist feature was intended to fix that, and Tor Browser 14.5 is rolling out with an updated version and the feature’s introduction on Android.
Tor Browsersends all its network traffic through the Tor network, which requires connecting to at least one Tor node. The process for discovering and connecting to a node can sometimes be blocked by internet filters, which is why Tor has additionalbridge relaysthat are harder to detect and block. Finding a bridge relay that works can be a repetitive and complicated process, so Tor Browser 11.5 introduced the new Connection Assist feature that automatically finds and tries bridges for you.
Connection Assist was already available on Linux, Mac, and Windows, and now it is finally coming to the Android version with the release of Tor Browser 14.5. That means Android phones and tablets will get the same automatic bridge detection when a direct connection to the Tor network fails. Tor connections in general should also be more stable, and the circuit display of connected relays has been added to the Android version.
The blog post announcement explained, “Before this feature could be made available on Android, we had to embark on a multi-year effort to refactor our tor integration across each platform first. This project has now reached an important milestone, and we’re proud to announce the release of Connection Assist for Android today. On a technical level, this means both desktop and Android now benefit from a shared backend (to a degree) and a leaner codebase, thanks to the elimination of a significant amount of legacy and redundant code.”
Tor Browser 14.5 has a few other useful improvements, too. Tor logs on desktop are now more readable, and quitting the browser on Android does a better job of shutting down background processes and recent tasks. Tor also now fully supports Belarusian, Bulgarian and Portugal Portuguese. If you spot an error with the updated translations, you may help fix them through theTor project’s community portal.
The updated codebase could help with a potential transition toArti, an implementation of the Tor network protocols in the Rust programming language. Arti is still in development, but it could end up replacing the current C-based code in the Tor browser to provide better security and reliability. The documentation for Arti explains, “According to our estimations, Rust would make at least half of the security flaws we’ve identified impossible, and many more would have been extremely unlikely.”
Get Tor Browser
You candownload Tor Browserfrom the project’s official website for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. There’s still no official version for iPhone and iPad, but Tor does recommendOnion Browser, which uses the same network.
The desktop versions of Tor Browser are based on Mozilla Firefox ESR, andrequiresWindows 10 and later, or macOS 10.15 and later. The Android app currently works on Android 5.0 and newer.
