Tor Browser 12.0 offers Apple Silicon Support and Android Enhancements

Tor Browser 12.0 has been released by the Tor Project team. This major release introduces support for Apple Silicon Chips and many enhancements to the Android version.

Tor, a Firefox browser that allows you to access.onion domains which are only available on the Onion network. It also lets you browse the internet anonymously.

This is achieved by the browser routing traffic via network nodes and encrypting network data. An exit node is responsible for relaying the data back to the user after connection requests have reached their destination.

Tor 12.0 is now available

Tor browser version 12.0 was built on Firefox 102. This is an upgrade to Firefox version 91 which was the basis for Tor’s previous release, v11.5.

All security and performance improvements, as well as code improvements, that Firefox has implemented in the ESR (Extended Support Release), have been made available on Tor.

Tor 12.0 has a notable feature: native support for Apple Silicon Chips, i.e. M1 and M2 devices.

Tor uses a universal binary now that bundles x8664 and ARM64 build and picks the right version to run on the platform.

Native support for Apple’s latest architecture has the main advantage of better Tor browser performance on macOS systems.

Android has been neglected previously by Tor Project, getting infrequent updates, delays in receiving new features and being excused for not having the latest versions. Now, Android is catching up with the desktop version.

: “Since January, our developers have worked hard to recommence frequent updates for Android, improve app’s stability and catch up with Fenix (Firefox For Android’s) cycle.”

“The next stage in our Android strategy is to start porting select, high-priority feature that were recently launched on desktop to Android.”

Tor 12.0 introduces the HTTPs only mode first . This allows the browser to switch automatically to the HTTPS versions of visited websites when they are available.

HTTPS connections are preferable to HTTPS because information is exchanged between site visitors and server hosting site is encrypted. This prevents man-in the-middle attacks as well as sensitive data exposure.

The Android Tor browser now has a new feature called “prioritize.onion websites”. This redirects the user to the appropriate ‘.onion” version of the site. This new feature was introduced in the “Privacy, security” settings menu.

Tor browser 12.0 also supports multiple languages other than English through a language packs downloading system. This replaces previous dedicated installers for various languages.

It is possible to switch languages at any time after installing, or to install multiple language packs that can be switched between easily.

To avoid backdoored versions which can spy on your browsing data, you should only download the most recent version of Tor from .