Back in 2017, we learned that the people behind the privacy-focused Tor Browser were working on a mobile application that would be better than what most of us hell-bent on taking advantage of the privacy cushioning that comes with the Tor network, Orfox.
Later that year, work on the Tor Browser app began and has been ongoing since then with an alpha build dropping last year. A stable build was released in May.
Now, after a lot of work since then, the Tor Browser is available for download by all users from the Google Play Store (see link below).
That development means that there is now little need for Orfox, the mobile application from the Guardian Project that, combined with another app, Orbot, allowed users to browse safely.
As a result, the Guardian Project has released a new update to Orfox that directs the app’s over 1 million active users to, instead, download and install the new Tor Browser app. This, in effect, means that it is the end of the road for Orfox.
Released 4 years ago, Orfox was downloaded over 14 million times. Its popularity was driven by the need to use the Tor network on mobile devices, something the developers of the Tor Browser weren’t supporting at the time. Orfox was able to allow users to access Tor-specific websites by using another application, Orbot, to provide a Tor connection. And now its watch has ended.
One more thing: Tor Browser is only available on Android at the moment.
