Core Apps » Orfox Private Browser

We have started a wiki page to answer questions about Orfox: Orfox_vs_Tor_Browser_FAQ

How is Orfox different than Tor Browser for desktop?

Orfox is built from the same source code as Tor Browser, but with a few minor modifications to the privacy enhancements to make them compatible with Android.

• The Orfox code repository is at https://github.com/guardianproject/tor-browser and the Tor Browser repository is here: https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-browser.git/

• Orfox is built from the Tor Browser repo based on ESR38 (https://dev.guardianproject.info/issues/5146 https://dev.guardianproject.info/news/221) and has only two modified patches that were not relevant/necessary for Android

• Orfox includes a "Request Mobile Site" option that allows you to change the user-agent from the standard Tor Browser agent to a modified android/mobile one: "Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0". (https://dev.guardianproject.info/issues/5404)

How is Orfox different than Firefox for Android?

• Beyond the core Tor Browser components, Orfox also must ensure all Android-specific code is properly routed through the Tor proxy, and otherwise hardened to protect against data and privacy leaks.

• Orfox adds patches at the Java/Android app layer to enable proxying of all Java network/HTTP communications through the local Orbot HTTP proxy (localhost:8118). SOCKS proxying is not supported by default so more work needs to be done to enable that, but for now HTTP proxying is acceptable. (https://dev.guardianproject.info/issues/5235 https://dev.guardianproject.info/issues/5317)
  Orfox removes the Android permissions for Contacts, Camera, Microphone, Location and NFC (https://dev.guardianproject.info/issues/3822)