Tor Browser 15.0 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and distribution directory. This is our first stable release based on Firefox ESR 140, incorporating a year’s worth of changes that have been shipped upstream in Firefox. As part of this process, we’ve also completed our annual ESR transition audit, where we reviewed and addressed around 200 Bugzilla issues for changes in Firefox that may negatively affect the privacy and security of Tor Browser users. Our final reports from this audit are now available in the tor-browser-spec repository on our GitLab instance.
Notable features include vertical tabs and tab groups on desktop, and screen lock on Android.
At present, Firefox 140 and Tor Browser 15.0 support Android 5.0 or later, which was released almost 11 years ago. While Mozilla’s commitment to support such an old version of Android is admirable, it introduces several technical and security challenges for developers. As a consequence, Firefox have announced their intention to increase the minimum support requirements to Android 8.0, and have also decided to drop support for x86 CPUs for Android and Linux. Sadly, it’s not possible for the Tor Project to maintain support for these platforms on our own without official support from Mozilla.
I’ll be honest the confusing wording of this paragraph got me thinking they dropped x86 support for Android AND linux devices. But they were actually trying to say that older versions of Android and 32-bit Linux systems are no longer supported.