Hello!

In parallel to Tor Browser 8.5 we'll ship the first alpha in the 9.0 series, 9.0a1. Bundles for testing are up at:

https://people.torproject.org/~gk/builds/9.0a1-build1/

Apart from the many stability fixes for mobile (which made it into Tor Browser 8.5 as well) this alpha comes with two major new features:

1) Tor Launcher is getting tighter integrated into the browser as a preparation step for the switch to Firefox 68 ESR. That results in it not showing up anymore on the about:addons page while still being available (and we don't need to make a code-signing exception for it either anymore, which is nice). See the underyling proposal for this descision for full details.[1]

2) We backported Mozilla's Letterboxing feature[2] which allows us to finally tackle the problem of not properly rounded screen dimensions in case users start to maximize or otherwise resize the browser window. Letterboxing is off by default for now, although we plan to enabled it in one of the upcoming alpha releases. If you want to check it out and report issues please add the `privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing` preference on about:config and set it to `true`. Many thanks to Tom Ritter and anyone else at Mozilla who has been working on that problem and designing the current approach.

The full changelog since 8.5a12 is:

Tor Browser 9.0a1 -- May 21 2019 * All platforms * Update Firefox to 60.7.0esr * Update Torbutton to 2.1.9 * Bug 30069: Use slider and about:tor localizations * Bug 30115+27449+25145: Map browser + domain -> credentials to fix UI issues * Bug 30171: Don't sync cookie.cookieBehavior and firstparty.isolate * Bug 30425: Revert armagadd-on-2.0 changes * Bug 30497: Add Donate link to about:tor * Bug 30464: Add WebGL to safer descriptions * Translations update * Update HTTPS Everywhere to 2019.5.6.1 * Bug 24622: Proper first-party isolation of s3.amazonaws.com * Bug 30425: Revert armagadd-on-2.0 changes * Windows + OS X + Linux * Update Tor Launcher to 0.2.19 * Bug 28044: Integrate Tor Launcher into tor-browser * Bug 29627: Moat: add support for obfsproxy's meek_lite * Bug 30139: Remove FTE bits * Translations update * Bug 28044: Integrate Tor Launcher into tor-browser * Bug 30372: Backport letterboxing (bug 1538130) * Bug 28369: Stop shipping pingsender executable * Bug 30457: Remove defunct default bridges * Bug 29045: Ensure that tor does not start up in dormant mode * Bug 29641: Try to connect over IPv6 if needed * Windows * Bug 30319: Drop FTE releated bits * Bug 29319: Remove FTE support for Windows * OS X * Bug 30241: Bump snowflake version to d11e55aabe * Linux * Bug 30319: Drop FTE releated bits * Bug 30241: Bump snowflake version to d11e55aabe * Android * Bug 29982: Force single-pane UI on Tor Preferences * Bug 30086: Prevent Sync-related crashes on Android * Bug 30214: Kill background thread when Activity is null * Bug 30239: Render Fragments after crash * Bug 30136: Use 'Tor Browser' as brand name on mobile, too * Bug 30069: Use slider and about:tor localizations * Bug 30371: Stop hard-coding the content provider name in tor-android-service * Bug 30162: Tor Browser bootstrap process got stuck after interrupting it * Bug 30166: If specified, only use custom bridges for connecting * Bug 30518: Add SocksPort flags for consistency across platforms * Bug 30284: Fix broken start-up on KitKat devices * Bug 30489: Remove Unused Resources from tor-android-service * Build System * Windows * Bug 29307: Use Stretch for cross-compiling for Windows * Bug 29731: Remove faketime for Windows builds * Linux * Bug 30377: Remove selfrando from our build system * Bug 30448: Strip Browser/gtk2/libmozgtk.so * Android * Bug 29981: Add option to build without using containers * Bug 30169: Switch to our tor-android-service repo * Bug 30404: Remove Orbot Project * Bug 30280: Wrong SHA-256 sum for j2objc-annotations-1.1.jar

Georg

[1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-browser-spec.git/tree/proposals/102-integr... [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407366