Tor Browser for Android — First Official App Released On Play Store

Wohooo! Great news for privacy-focused users.

Tor Browser, the most popular privacy-focused browser, for
Android is finally out of beta, and the first stable version has
now arrived on Google Play Store for anyone to download.

The Tor Project announced Tuesday the first official stable
release of its ultra-secure internet browser for Android devices,
Tor Browser 8.5—which you can now download for
FREE on your mobile devices from Google Play Store.
^[1]

Tor Browser is mostly used by privacy-focused people, activists,
journalists, and even cyber criminal gangs to avoid government
monitoring. It allows users to browse the Internet anonymously, by
hiding their IP addresses and identity, through a network of
encrypted servers that bounce their web requests around multiple
intermediate links.

Access to Tor anonymity network was previously available on
Android mobile operating system only through other apps or browsers
like Orbot^[2]/Orfox^[3] app, but you can now use
the official Tor Browser built on Firefox on your mobile
device.

The first alpha build of Tor Browser was released by the Tor
Project back in September last year, and since then, the developers
have worked hard to provide the same protections users get on the
desktop variant to the Android platform as well.

According to the Tor Project developers, Tor Browser for Android is
not as complete as its desktop version, but you can see security
features like no proxy bypass, enabled first-party isolation to
block cross-site tracking and other anti-fingerprinting
defenses.
“While there are still feature gaps between the desktop and Android
Tor Browser, we are confident that Tor Browser for Android provides
essentially the same protections that can be found on desktop
platforms,” the Tor Project said.

In the notification area of your Android device, Tor Browser
gives a quick, “New Identity” button that allows you to immediately
clean the instance of your Tor network, with various caches and
other information, without reopening the app or restarting the Tor
onion network.

Besides the Android release, the Tor Project also announced the
release of a couple of new features in the latest Tor Browser
version, like extra tabs, new logos, and user interface
improvements.

The company also said the Tor browser would continue to be
missing from the iOS platform, as Apple continues to restrict all
third-party browsers and forces browser companies to use its own
engine. However, iPhone and iPad users can still use Onion Browser^[5] to access the Tor
network.