This guide works only on Firefox for Android versions with about:config access like Firefox for Android Beta, Developer Edition or Nightly. It also works on sane forks like Fennec F-Droid or Iceraven, but not Waterfox (which doesn’t give any download option anyways, so you can only have Google place it on your device if you happen to use a Google-infested Android firmware).

Step by step guide with expanations:

  1. Open your Firefox for Android version
  2. Type in about:config (exactly like that) into the address bar and press enter
    • This opens the hidden extra configuration opens that Mozilla things are too important for normal Firefox for Android stable users to have access to on mobile.
  3. Search for network.proxy. in the search bar on the opened page
  4. Scroll down until you find network.proxy.socks and enter “localhost” into the hard-to-see text box below that name
    • This sets the Socks hostname that the browser should connect to – “localhost” is the current device.
  5. Just below you’ll find network.proxy.socks_port; enter 9050 there unless TOR is configured on a different port (unlikely)
  6. Just below that you’ll also find network.proxy.socks_remote_dns – if this isn’t already set to true, tap the setting, then tap the “Toggle” button to enable it
    • This makes sure all data will be sent through TOR, otherwise your connection may be susceptible to DNS Leaks.
  7. If the setting below that (network.proxy.socks_version) doesn’t already say 5 (unlikely), make sure you change it to that * There is an older version, Socks 4, that is slightly broken, don’t use it.
  8. Finally, towards the end of the options list, there is the setting network.proxy.type which sets whether Firefox for Android will be using the proxy settings you just entered; change this to 1!
    • The default value 5 means “Use system settings” (and ignore the local ones set in the previous steps), the value 0 means “Don’t use any proxy ever / Directly connect to the internet”, 1 means “Use manual proxy configuration”.

After setting these values and making sure you have TOR running, you should be able to open https://check.torproject.org/ and see the green “Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.” message!

Screenshot of the Tor checker website showing the congratulations message