How to Use TOR on iPhone and iPad with Onion Browser
TOR is a relay network which aims to increase your online privacy by attempting to anonymize web browsing activity. This is achieved by distributing your traffic across a series of TOR servers, which obfuscates your IP behind those Tor servers. While TOR is typically used on the desktop – you can read about using TOR on Mac here if interested – you can also access and use a TOR browser on the iPhone and iPad too.
For this particular article on quick and easy TOR access from iOS, we’re going to focus on a third party TOR app for iPhone and iPad called Onion Browser. It’s free and does the job of connecting to TOR, even if Onion Browser is imperfect and a little bit clunky (a more refined version is currently in beta testing but due out soon). The Onion Browser app offers simple TOR usage from iOS should you wish to access onion URLs or have some degree of enhanced anonymity with your web browsing.
How to Use TOR on iPhone or iPad with Onion Browser
You will need a modern version of iOS and an existing internet connection, the Onion Browser app comes from the App Store so you will need to download that too. Here are the steps, it’s pretty straight forward:
- On the iPhone or iPad, download Onion Browser for iOS on the App Store, it’s free
- Launch the Onion Browser app in iOS and choose “Connect to TOR” on launch
- Tor will initialize and when completed you will see a browser screen indicating it has successfully connected to the TOR network (or unsuccessfully…in which case you would not be on TOR)
- Once the TOR connection has completed, browse the web as usual in the Onion Browser app
Like all TOR browsers, Onion Browser is missing some features and abilities, and not all websites will work as expected or render correctly within the app. That is done to try and mitigate data and IP leaking, and so turning off various abilities in whatever Tor browser is necessary.
Keep in mind that browsing the web with TOR is slow, this is because your network traffic is being distributed around the globe in an attempt to anonymize you and increase your privacy. That lagginess and speed reduction is experienced in any TOR browser, it’s not just Onion Browser.
You can renew and request a new IP at anytime in the TOR browser, but you may need to force quit the app and relaunch the Onion Browser for that to be successful.
The Onion Browser application is a bit rough around the edges and faces some limitations due to iOS architecture, but if all you need is a randomized IP address or access to some onion domains, it should do the trick. As mentioned before, there’s a newer version that is currently in beta testing that is quite a bit more refined, and it should be due out soon.
Whether or not you trust TOR to keep you anonymous or increase your privacy in todays era of security breaches and privacy violations is entirely up to you, but it’s probably a good idea to read about TOR in general here, you might want to check the TorProject blogpost on Onion Browser, and you may find it useful to know that Onion Browser for iOS is open source so you can look through the source code on Github if that interests you too.
Do you know of any other tips, tricks, or helpful apps for accessing TOR on the iPhone or iPad? Let us know in the comments below.
How do I disable java script completely when Using onion browser …
After downloading and opening the onion browser that app upon opening shuts off every time thereby impairing its functionality….
App didn’t open right. There is a red screen that says “Looks like we got stuck! Quit. Then restart the app.” My trouble is the app is “frozen” on this screen and I can’t find a way to close it. Computer otherwise is not affected? Anyone know how to fix this?
hello
If I download the onion browser from the App Store willI still be able to use search engines such as Google or Bing and simply have the onion browser as an alternative ‘engine’?
How do I get iPhone onto toe I’ve downloaded onion browser
Thank you to our new Congress for rolling back those pesky regulations that protected internet privacy, and to finally free the corporations to sell your internet usage data.
Now everyone will know *exactly* what you do, read, watch, and look at on the internet. And it will be sold too, cus why not sell everything when there is money to be made? Surely *you* aren’t embarrassed by what you look up on the internet in what you think is the privacy of your home computer…. are you?
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regulations-fcc/
@Gail
Why you do not make the effort to read each part of this post, where the app is perfectly linked in step#1.
To those of you here who are talking about the clickable link so obviously posted in the above article, the link in this article takes me to a completely blank page on the Apple Store’s website.
George, the article links to Onion Browser. Here is that link again if you skipped the article and found yourself in the comments section wondering how to use TOR without reading an article on how to use TOR on an iPhone or iPad.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onion-browser-secure-anonymous-web-with-tor/id519296448?mt=8
That link will download the TOR browser, called Onion Browser for iPhone or iPad, and yes it is on the App Store that is where you download iOS apps.
Can you clarify which onion browser app to buy please – there are several in the app store.
There’s a blue clickable link in the article, dear 🤦🏻♂️
Onion Browser is free and the download via the App Store is linked in the article, you do not need to buy anything to use TOR. If anything is trying to sell access to TOR (which is free) you should avoid it. Onion Browser is free for iPhone and iPad, and TOR has free clients for the desktop environment including MacOS, Windows, and Linux.
Most people don’t need TOR however, you’re probably included in that ‘most people’ list as TOR is generally for advanced users with specific privacy demands that know how to use the service.