Orbot

Orbot is the Guardian Project’s app for using the Tor network on Android, which hides from the sites you visit where you are connecting from, and hides from your network what you connect to. The app describes itself: “Orbot is an open-source application that contains Tor, IPtProxy (Lyrebird, Meek, Snowflake), hev-socks5-tunnel and LibEvent. It provides a VPN tunnel, a local HTTP Connect proxy (HTTPS only on port 8118) and a SOCKS proxy (9050) into the Tor network.”

How it routes your apps

• As a VPN, the default. Until you choose particular apps, every app goes through Tor except Orbot itself and the Tor apps it leaves out to avoid Tor over Tor: Tor Browser, OnionShare, Briar and Cwtch.
• Power User Mode runs Tor as a proxy only, without the VPN, for apps you set up yourself.
• Bridges for places where Tor is blocked: Snowflake, built-in obfs4 bridges, Meek, bridges from the Tor Project by Telegram or e-mail, and your own. In some heavily censored countries Orbot also offers DNSTT; Brazil isn’t one of them.
• Onion services: you can host your own, with client authorisation.
• Exit country: you can choose the country your traffic leaves Tor from, Brazil among them.

Defaults worth knowing

From the code of this version:

• Orbot connects directly, without a bridge, and Smart Connect is off.
• Tapping Connect starts the VPN, unless you turn on Power User Mode.
• It starts with your phone and connects to Tor.
• Kindness Mode is off.

New in 17.9.7

This release updates Tor to 0.4.9.14, the bundled IPtProxy to 5.7.0 with Snowflake 2.15.1, and Lyrebird, which provides obfs4, to 0.9.0, along with the built-in bridges and the country data Tor uses.

What goes online

• The Tor network, and through it whatever your apps connect to.
• The Tor Project’s and the Guardian Project’s bridge services, only if you use Smart Connect or ask for bridges in the app. These requests are themselves disguised, through a content-delivery network or encrypted DNS.
• The Snowflake broker, when you connect through Snowflake or turn on Kindness Mode.

We found no analytics or update check in the code. The privacy policy: “Orbot does not directly collect any data on user activity. Other than what is built into and tracked by Google Play, Orbot does not utilize any third party analytics.”

About this file

• This is the official GitHub release of version 17.9.7 RC 1, from 9 October 2026, matching the SHA-256 hash GitHub publishes. “RC” is part of every Orbot version name; GitHub marks this release as Latest, not as a pre-release, and Google Play has the same version. It is the 64-bit ARM build, the only one in this release.
• It is signed with the Orbot release key, a certificate in the Tor Project’s name, the same key as the builds in the Guardian Project’s own F-Droid repository, which still offered 17.9.5 on 15 October. The Guardian Project says the apps in its repository are “signed by the same key as the APKs that are released in the Google Play Store”, so a newer version from any of them should install over this one.
• The 35.9 MB file runs on Android 7.0 and later and declares 16 permissions: internet, network and Wi-Fi state, local network access for an open proxy, notifications, the camera for scanning bridge QR codes, the services that keep Tor running, starting at boot, battery-optimisation and exact-alarm permissions, and biometric authentication.
• Orbot is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause, like Tor; the transport and tunnel libraries it bundles are under the MIT and BSD licences. “Orbot” and its logo are trademarks of Nathan Freitas.
• Most of the app is translated into Brazilian Portuguese.
• The screenshots are the project’s own, from its repository.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017).