Jan 10, 2014 The bundle is based on the official Tor Browser Bundle with changes to make it work on older Mac OS X versions and the PowerPC architecture. Most notably, Qt is downgraded to the last Mac OS X 10.4 compatible version (4.7.4) and Firefox is patched with suitable parts from the TenFourFox changeset. Sep 23, 2020 Download Tor Browser for free. Browser for using Tor on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Tor Browser enables you to use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. Tor is a software that bounces your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers.

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In case you weren’t aware, your Internet Service Provider (as well as other less than reputable parties), can monitor your every move on the internet. This means every website you visit, every file you download, it knows what you’re up to. Luckily, there is a tool available that can keep your online activities under wraps. It’s called the Tor Browser.

What is Tor?

The Tor website explains it best:

The Tor network is a group of volunteer-operated servers that allows people to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Tor’s users employ this network by connecting through a series of virtual tunnels rather than making a direct connection, thus allowing both organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy. Along the same line, Tor is an effective censorship circumvention tool, allowing its users to reach otherwise blocked destinations or content. Tor can also be used as a building block for software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features.

By making use of the Tor network, users can safely and privately navigate the web. We’ll warn you upfront that using Tor will slow your internet connection a bit, so using it for streaming and such probably won’t be a satisfactory experience. But for connections where privacy is a must, Tor is a great option.

Installing Tor on Your Mac

The easiest way to install the Tor software on your Mac is to download the Tor Bundle form the Tor website. Visit the Tor Bundle Download Page. The website should recognize that you are on a Mac, and offer up a link to click to begin the download. Just click that rather large purple button to begin the download.

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After the download is complete, open the folder you downloaded the install app to, (likely your “Downloads” directory), and double-click the file to begin the installation.

Drag the TorBrowser icon to your Applications folder to install it. To run Tor, simply open your Applications folder, find the icon, and double-click it to run the app. You’ll likely be asked if you really want to open the app the first time you run it. Just click the “Open” button and the Tor Browser will load.

You’ll also be asked to modify some settings for the Tor setup the first time the app is run, but in most cases, no changes are needed, and you can just click the “Connect” button to connect to the Tor network. There will be a short wait as the app configures itself and connects to the network.

When the Tor Browser opens, you’ll see a message confirming you’ve correctly installed the Tor software. You can verify that everything is working correctly by clicking the “Test Tor Network Settings” link on this webpage.

A new page will display, congratulating you on having everything configured properly, and showing you what you IP address will appear to be to other parties. (It’ll be different from your real one. That’s part of the anonymity of Tor.)

You are now ready to browse the internet while enjoying the anonymity Tor provides. To get the most out of Tor, be sure to read the helpful tips the website offers for browsing with Tor. Quick tip, don’t expect all of your internet traffic to by protected by Tor, only the traffic passing through the Tor browser is protected. Be sure to keep that in mind.

For more tips and tricks that can help you make better use of your Mac, iOS device, Apple Watch, or Apple TV, be sure to visit the “How To” section of our website.

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I'm sure some people have reasons to want to hide their true identity when browsing the internet. Some of the reasons that immediately come to mind involve illegal or immoral activity, but really there are legitimate reasons also. Tor users aren't necessarily shady characters or people prone to wearing tin-foil hats.

I downloaded the Vidalia Bundle for OS X. This includes Tor, Vidalia (a Tor GUI ), Torbutton (a Firefox tool to control your use of Tor), and Privoxy (a filtering web proxy) into one package, with everything ready to work together. You'll find full instructions for that bundle at https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-osx.html.en.

You need to have Firefox shutdown while doing the install because it starts up another copy to add Torbutton. You are also asked to reboot. That always raises my eyebrows: just WHAT did you do to my system that requires a restart? A proxy server shouldn't have to hook very deeply into the OS - it just needs to sit on a port. Why the restart? I don't like that..

I could not get Torbutton to work. I couldn't even get it to show its buttons and while I did have it installed it prevented Firefox from closing down. This may be because I use NoScript; Torbutton flat out states that they don't like Noscript:

I really can't agree that I'm better off with all or nothing, but there it is. As Torbutton is largely convenience anyway, and as I really have no plans to use Tor extensively anyway, I decided not to pursue the reasons for this failure and just configured Firefox preferences to use localhost:8118 as its proxy. That was simple for Firefox and Opera, but Safari doesn't specify proxies directly. It calls up the OS X network preference pane instead. I could not make that work except for Safari. That is, if I configured my Ethernet connection to use the proxy, Safari would use it but Opera and Firefox would not. That seems wrong.. I would have expected the Ethernet configuration to affect everything, but it didn't.

I think I'd rather have per-browser configuration anyway. If I did have reason to use Tor, I'd probably use it with one specific browser rather than wanting to use it for everything.

But as I said, I have no pressing reason to use Tor anyway. It might be handy now and then if I were testing web scripts that key on IP, but that doesn't come up very often. I just can't think of any other reason I need this.

How about the rest of you? Do you use Tor for anything specific? Or is this conspiracy theorist realm for you?

Be sure to read Why you need balls of steel to operate a Tor exit node if you are thinking about Tor.

There are real risks involved. Your risks from NOT using this would have to be very high before you should consider this. This isn't for some paranoid tin foil hat type who thinks the government cares about their private browsing.

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