Core Apps » Orfox Private Browser

Orfox vs Tor Browser vs Firefox for Android 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)