Tor VPN Beta: What we've learned building our own VPN for Android from scratch

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Tor VPN Beta: What we’ve learned building our own VPN for Android from scratch by pavel | September 9, 2026

Tor VPN Beta：我们从零开始构建 Android VPN 的经验教训，作者：pavel | 2026 年 9 月 9 日

For years, Tor Browser has been one of the most effective tools for protecting privacy and bypassing censorship online. But most people don’t experience the internet through a browser anymore. They connect to it via their favorite apps. Wouldn’t it be nice to extend the same privacy protections to messaging apps, social media, email, and other services? And for years, we heard this again and again in our user research. People wanted a simple way to protect their entire device, which inspired the idea for Tor VPN back in 2021.

多年来，Tor Browser 一直是保护在线隐私和绕过审查的最有效工具之一。但大多数人不再仅仅通过浏览器访问互联网，而是通过他们喜爱的应用程序进行连接。如果能将同样的隐私保护扩展到即时通讯软件、社交媒体、电子邮件和其他服务，那该多好？多年来，我们在用户研究中反复听到这种需求。人们希望有一种简单的方法来保护整个设备，这激发了我们在 2021 年构思 Tor VPN 的灵感。

We focused on Android first, where the need was greatest and where we could reach the most users in censored regions. We built Tor VPN Beta as a first version, with the expectation that we would learn from real-world use. And when we first launched Tor VPN Beta for Android in a limited release last fall, the primary use case quickly became much clearer: unblock the internet. This has shaped how we’ve prioritized development and user support in the time since the initial launch, and how we think about the product moving forward.

我们首先专注于 Android 平台，因为那里的需求最为迫切，且我们能触及审查地区最多的用户。我们构建了 Tor VPN Beta 作为首个版本，期望能从实际使用中汲取经验。去年秋天，当我们首次在 Android 上限量发布 Tor VPN Beta 时，其主要用途很快变得清晰起来：解除互联网封锁。这决定了我们自首次发布以来在开发和用户支持方面的优先级，也影响了我们对产品未来发展的思考。

What makes Tor VPN different Unlike commercial VPNs, Tor VPN Beta is built on a fundamentally different model. It is our first step into device-level network protection on mobile to extend Tor’s protections beyond the browser. Each mobile app on your device gets its own Tor circuit, rather than sharing a single tunnel. That means activity from one app can’t easily be linked to another. This type of app isolation is a design choice heavily inspired by the cross-site tracking protections in Tor Browser. It’s a different model from most VPNs, and one that’s designed to reduce cross-tracking by default.

Tor VPN 有何不同？与商业 VPN 不同，Tor VPN Beta 构建于一种根本不同的模型之上。这是我们迈向移动设备级网络保护的第一步，旨在将 Tor 的保护范围扩展到浏览器之外。设备上的每个移动应用都会获得其专属的 Tor 电路，而不是共享同一个隧道。这意味着一个应用的活动无法轻易与另一个应用关联。这种应用隔离设计深受 Tor Browser 中跨站跟踪保护机制的启发。这与大多数 VPN 的模型不同，旨在默认减少跨应用跟踪。

As Tor VPN Beta has matured, we’ve also worked on making that app-level control easier to use. The Apps screen is now searchable, so people can more quickly find a specific app and decide whether it should be routed through Tor.

随着 Tor VPN Beta 的成熟，我们还致力于让这种应用级控制变得更易于使用。“应用”屏幕现在支持搜索功能，用户可以更快地找到特定应用，并决定是否应通过 Tor 路由其流量。

Rethinking how we design for circumvention While Tor VPN Beta includes features commonly associated with VPNs, such as exit selection, those aren’t always the right approach for users trying to bypass censorship. This was one of the most important lessons that came from usability testing and early feedback during the development stage. We originally explored giving users more control over exit selection, which, on paper, sounded great. But in practice, this introduced confusion. Users trying to bypass censorship were selecting exit locations when they should have been using bridges instead. There was a mismatch between how Tor works and how people expected it to work.

重新思考如何设计绕过审查的功能：虽然 Tor VPN Beta 包含通常与 VPN 关联的功能（如出口节点选择），但对于试图绕过审查的用户来说，这并不总是正确的方法。这是我们在开发阶段通过可用性测试和早期反馈学到的最重要教训之一。我们最初探索让用户对出口节点选择拥有更多控制权，这在理论上听起来很棒，但在实践中却造成了困惑。试图绕过审查的用户选择了出口位置，而他们本应使用网桥。Tor 的实际工作方式与人们的预期之间存在偏差。

This is why the current design required connecting the app to the Tor network first before selecting an exit. Exit selection is still something we want to explore more fully in the future, but it needs to be introduced in a way that doesn’t create user error in high-risk situations.

这就是为什么当前的设计要求在选择出口之前，必须先将应用连接到 Tor 网络。出口节点选择仍然是我们未来想要更深入探索的方向，但必须以一种不会在高风险情况下导致用户操作失误的方式引入。

Used where it’s needed most Early on, we saw strong adoption in highly censored regions, including Iran and Turkmenistan. This stood in contrast to Tor Browser for Android, which tends to skew more toward users in the Global North. With Tor VPN Beta, we’re seeing much deeper engagement from users in the Global South, people dealing with network restrictions as a daily reality.

在最需要的地方使用：早期，我们看到在伊朗和土库曼斯坦等审查严重的地区，该应用的使用率很高。这与倾向于全球北方用户的 Android 版 Tor Browser 形成了鲜明对比。通过 Tor VPN Beta，我们看到来自全球南方用户的参与度要深得多，这些人每天都在应对网络限制。

Because of how people are using Tor VPN Beta, we’ve doubled down on improving its circumvention capabilities. One example was prioritizing the addition of WebTunnel bridges with one of the early releases (1.4.0 beta), which helps Tor traffic look like regular encrypted web traffic. This makes it harder for censors to detect and block connections. We have also fixed several bugs and made quality-of-life improvements across bridge support more generally, with the goal of making bridge use more reliable.

由于人们使用 Tor VPN Beta 的方式，我们加倍努力提升其绕过审查的能力。一个例子是在早期版本（1.4.0 beta）中优先增加了 WebTunnel 网桥，这有助于使 Tor 流量看起来像普通的加密网页流量。这使得审查者更难检测和拦截连接。我们还修复了多个错误，并对网桥支持进行了更广泛的体验改进，目标是使网桥的使用更加可靠。

Stability and reliability matter just as much as features In fact, a significant amount of work since the early release has gone into improving stability. Tor VPN is built on Arti, our next-generation Tor implementation written in Rust. Under the hood, that means a new, solid technical foundation rather than patching around legacy architecture. One of the immediate benefits is improved reliability, including fewer crashes and better handling of network conditions.

稳定性和可靠性与功能同样重要：事实上，自早期发布以来，我们投入了大量工作来提高稳定性。Tor VPN 构建于 Arti 之上，这是我们用 Rust 编写的下一代 Tor 实现。从底层来看，这意味着我们拥有了一个全新的、坚实的技术基础，而不是在旧架构上修修补补。直接的好处之一是可靠性的提升，包括更少的崩溃和对网络状况更好的处理。

We have also invested in making our builds reproducible and getting the app onto F-Droid. Reproducible builds let anyone verify that the binary you’re running matches the published source code, while F-Droid availability gives users a way to install and update the app without relying on Google Play, both of which matter for a privacy and security-focused tool.

我们还投入精力实现了可复现构建，并将应用上架到 F-Droid。可复现构建让任何人都能验证你运行的二进制文件与发布的源代码是否一致，而 F-Droid 的可用性则为用户提供了一种无需依赖 Google Play 即可安装和更新应用的方式，这两点对于注重隐私和安全的工具来说都至关重要。

While Tor VPN Beta doesn’t behave like a commercial VPN optimized for speed, the Tor network has become more performant over time, and we’re continuing to bring those improvements into the mobile experience. There are still performance features from Tor’s C implementation, like congestion control, that are not yet available in Arti. Bringing those capabilities over is part of what comes next.

虽然 Tor VPN Beta 的表现不像针对速度优化的商业 VPN，但 Tor 网络随着时间的推移性能已有所提升，我们正继续将这些改进引入移动体验中。Tor 的 C 语言实现中仍有一些性能功能（如拥塞控制）尚未在 Arti 中实现。将这些功能迁移过来是我们接下来的工作重点之一。

We set out to extend Tor beyond the browser to close a gap in mobile protection, but the project was quickly being shaped by how people actually use it, especially those who need reliable, device-wide circumvention. So we focused on building the right foundation for Tor on mobile with a modular Tor stack centered on Arti and Onionmasq that can evolve with real-world use. These components are now reusable across multiple applications, reducing ecosystem fragmentation and long-term maintenance risk. — Duncan, UX-Team Lead/ Product Manager, Tor VPN

我们着手将 Tor 扩展到浏览器之外，以填补移动保护方面的空白，但该项目很快受到人们实际使用方式的影响，特别是那些需要可靠的、全设备绕过审查功能的用户。因此，我们专注于为移动端 Tor 构建正确的基础，即以 Arti 和 Onionmasq 为核心的模块化 Tor 堆栈，使其能够随实际使用而演进。这些组件现在可以在多个应用程序中复用，从而减少了生态系统的碎片化和长期维护风险。—— Duncan，UX 团队负责人/产品经理，Tor VPN

There’s more work to do here. Tor Browser still sets the standard for what’s possible, and part of our goal is to bring Tor VPN closer to that level over time. What’s next? Tor VPN Beta is the result of a collaborative, multi-year effort. Thank you to The Guardian Project for their guidance and critical low-level mobile libraries, and the LEAP Encryption Acc

这里还有更多工作要做。Tor Browser 仍然是衡量可能性的标杆，我们的部分目标是随着时间的推移，让 Tor VPN 越来越接近这一水平。接下来是什么？Tor VPN Beta 是多年协作努力的成果。感谢 The Guardian Project 提供的指导和关键的底层移动库，以及 LEAP Encryption Acc。