Tor tabs and windows

A Tor tab or Tor window sends its pages through the Tor network, so the sites you visit see a Tor exit address instead of your IP address. Tor is built into Acira. You install nothing.

Open a Tor tab or window

Tor works in the Windows, Mac and Linux builds.

To open a Tor window, press Alt+Shift+N (Option+Shift+N on a Mac). Or open the Acira menu and choose New Tor window.
To open a Tor tab next to your normal tabs, open the Acira menu and choose New Tor tab. This command has no default key. You can give it one in Settings › Shortcuts (the command is called New Tor tab).
You can also right-click an empty part of the tab strip and choose New Tor tab or New Tor window.
To send one page through Tor, right-click a link and choose Open link in Tor tab, or right-click a bookmark and choose Open in Tor tab.
On the private tab page, choose Open a Tor tab.

You can also run these commands from command search.

Tor tab or Tor window

	Tor tab	Tor window
Where it lives	In a normal window, next to normal tabs	In its own window, with a purple look
What goes through Tor	That tab. Links and pop-ups opened from it stay in Tor.	Every page in the window. Nothing loads without Tor.
Shortcut	None by default	`Alt+Shift+N`
Search engine	Your default search engine	DuckDuckGo
Look	Purple tint and an onion icon where the close button sits	Purple frame

Both kinds share one Tor connection. Acira starts Tor when you open the first Tor tab or window and keeps it running until you quit, so the next one connects at once.

The first connection

A Tor tab opens on its own page. It shows Connecting to Tor…, the step Tor is on, and a progress bar. The first connection can take a minute or two. Later ones are faster. Pages you open while Tor connects wait, and they never load without Tor. There is no fallback to a direct connection.

When Tor is ready, the address bar shows a purple Tor pill and the page says Browsing through Tor. The page lists four facts:

Item	Status
Your IP address	Hidden from sites
History, cookies, site data	Gone at close
Extensions	Off
Browser fingerprint	Not hidden

If Tor cannot connect

The page says what went wrong. Choose Try again after you fix it.

Message	What to do
Can't reach the Tor network	Check your connection. Your network may block Tor. Try a bridge (see below).
Your clock is wrong	Tor cannot connect when the date or time is off. In Windows Settings, turn on Set time automatically.
Tor is taking too long to connect	Your network may be slow or block Tor. Try again.
Tor stopped unexpectedly	Nothing loaded without it. Try again.
Tor is missing from this install	The program file is gone. Reinstall Acira.
Tor failed its integrity check	The Tor program changed on disk. Reinstall Acira.

The Tor panel

Click the Tor pill in the address bar to open the Tor panel. It shows whether Tor is connected and holds these controls:

New Tor identity, with its shortcut.
Tor security level.
Prefer .onion versions.
Bookmark this page, which works when the Tor vault is on (see below).
Learn more, which opens the Tor page in a tab.

New Tor identity

A new identity starts you fresh. Use it when you want to finish one Tor session and begin another that sites cannot link to the first.

Press Ctrl+Shift+U (Cmd+Shift+U on a Mac) in a Tor tab or window. Or choose New Tor identity in the Acira menu (the row only appears in Tor), in the Tor panel, or on the Tor page.
Read the question: New Tor identity? Choose New identity, or Cancel. On the Tor page the row asks you to confirm instead: Confirm: close Tor tabs, clear their data.

Acira then closes your Tor tabs in every window, clears their cookies and site data, switches Tor to new routes, and opens one fresh Tor tab in each of those windows. Your other tabs are not touched. A download in progress stops.

If Tor cannot switch routes, nothing is closed. If site data cannot be cleared before the tabs close, your Tor tabs stay open and Acira says so, so you can try again. If some site data still cannot be cleared after the tabs have closed, Acira tells you so. Downloaded files are not removed.

A new identity does not delete the Tor vault (see below).

New Tor circuit for this site

Each site gets its own Tor circuit. To switch to a new one for the site you are on, without closing anything, choose New Tor circuit for this site. Acira changes the route for that site and reloads the page. It is in the Page information panel, in the Acira menu (on a website, in Tor), and in a Tor tab's right-click menu.

In a Tor tab or window, Ctrl+Shift+L runs it. Elsewhere that key is Seamless view. If you give New Tor circuit for this site a key of its own in Settings › Shortcuts, that key is used instead.

The Page information panel also shows Tor circuit: This browser, Guard, Middle, Exit, then the site, with each relay's country. For an onion site it shows Rendezvous point and notes that the service keeps its own relays hidden.

Tor security level

The security level turns off web features that attackers use. Higher levels break more sites.

Choose it in the Tor panel, or in Settings › Connection › Tor security level. The default is Standard. The choice is one setting for every Tor tab and window.

Level	What changes
Standard	No extra restrictions on websites beyond the protections every Tor tab has.
Safer	JavaScript is off on sites that are not HTTPS (onion addresses count as secure). JavaScript runs without its JIT compiler, and WebAssembly is off. WebGL is off. Audio and video do not start until you click or press a key on the page.
Safest	JavaScript is off on all sites. Web fonts, audio, video and WebGL are off.

A change applies to pages you open afterward. Open Tor tabs keep the old level until they reopen. Acira offers Reopen Tor tabs, which reopens them at the same pages. Sites may ask you to sign in again. Choose Later to keep them as they are. The panel then says Open Tor tabs still use the previous level.

Onion sites

Addresses that end in .onion work in Tor tabs. Acira does not look up an onion name outside Tor.

When a site in a Tor tab says it also has an onion address, an .onion available button appears in the address bar. Choose it to open the onion version in the same tab.
Turn on Prefer .onion versions to open the onion address automatically when a site offers one. Find it in the Tor panel or in Settings › Connection › Onion sites › Prefer .onion versions. It is off by default. The first request still goes to the regular address.
Some onion sites limit who can open them. The tab then says This onion site needs a key. Paste the private key the owner gave you (52 letters and digits, or one line of an .auth_private file) and choose Add key. The key stays in memory and is forgotten when Acira closes. It is never written to disk.

Bridges

If your network blocks Tor, a bridge disguises the connection so Tor can get through. Bridges are slower. Use one only when Tor will not connect without it.

When Acira thinks Tor is blocked, the Tor page says Tor looks blocked on this network and offers Connect through a bridge. If that bridge does not work, it offers Try another kind of bridge, Try again and Bridge settings. If your computer has no internet connection, the page says You're offline and Tor connects by itself when you are back.

To choose a bridge yourself, open Settings › Connection › Bridges.

Control	Choices	Default
Use a bridge	Off, Built-in bridge, A bridge I know	Off. Tor connects directly.
Bridge type (with Built-in bridge)	obfs4 (looks like random data, start here), Snowflake (goes through volunteers' browsers, often works where obfs4 is blocked), meek (looks like a visit to a large website, the slowest, for the strictest networks)	obfs4
Provide a bridge you know (with A bridge I know)	Paste one bridge per line, each starting with its type such as obfs4, webtunnel or snowflake. Acira checks each line as you type and says which line is wrong. At most 32 bridges.	Empty
Request a bridge from the Tor Project (with A bridge I know)	Choose Request, solve the puzzle, and the bridges it returns are saved as your own	Not used

Choose Save to apply. A Tor connection that is open reconnects with the new setting. The built-in bridges are the ones Tor Browser offers.

If the bridge programs are missing from your copy of Acira, the panel says so. Reinstall Acira to use bridges.

Keep Tor bookmarks and tabs

Tor normally forgets everything when you close it. The Tor vault is an option that keeps two things on this device: Tor bookmarks you save, and the Tor tabs you had open when a window closed. It is off by default. While it is off, nothing is written.

Open the Tor page. Under Saved on this device, choose Keep Tor bookmarks and tabs.
Read the note: Saved items stay on this device, encrypted. Tor can't hide them. Only bookmarks and the tabs you had open are kept: no history, no cookies.
Choose Turn on. Acira asks you to verify it is you (see below).

Once it is on, the Tor page offers these rows:

Row	What it does
Reopen last Tor tabs	Opens the Tor tabs you had open when your last Tor window closed. Acira keeps up to 40, with their addresses and titles. It says Reopened and the count.
Tor bookmarks	Lists what you saved. Choose one to open it, or Remove it. Acira keeps up to 2,000. To add one, choose Bookmark this page in the Tor panel on a page.
Clear saved Tor items…	Asks Delete all saved Tor items? Choose Confirm to delete the file and its key. The on or off choice stays.

The vault is one encrypted file. Acira keeps its key with your operating system account. Reading it, which means listing bookmarks or reopening tabs, asks you to verify yourself.

On Windows, that is Windows Hello: your face, fingerprint or PIN. If Windows Hello is not set up, Windows asks for your Windows account password. Acira has no password of its own for this.
On a Mac, Acira asks macOS to verify you. If you cancel or it fails, the items stay locked.

Turning the switch off stops saving and keeps what already exists until you clear it. If secure storage is not available on your PC, the row says so and Tor items cannot be kept. Only web pages (http and https) can be saved.

Downloads from Tor

A download that starts in a Tor tab goes through Tor. Some files connect to the internet when you open them, and that happens outside Tor. Acira shows a card, Be careful opening downloads, above the downloads list while any download came from a Tor tab. It asks Open a file from a Tor tab? before it opens one. Choose Got it to stop the warning. To stay safe, open such files while offline or on a system that always uses Tor.

Keep Tor up to date

Tor ships with Acira. Acira can also fetch newer Tor versions.

Setting	Where	Default
Keep Tor up to date	Settings › Connection › Tor	On. About once a week, when Tor starts, Acira asks the Tor Project for the current version through Tor and installs verified updates. Turn it off to keep the version that came with Acira.
Check for a Tor update	Settings › Connection › Tor	A button. Choose Check now. It shows when Tor was last checked.

An update that is installed is used the next time Tor starts with no Tor window open. A download that fails its signature check, or a Tor program that will not run, leaves the Tor that came with Acira in use.

What Tor tabs do and do not do

They send page loads, DNS lookups and downloads through Tor. Acira blocks pages on your own computer and local network (localhost, private addresses, .local and .lan) in Tor sessions.
They keep no history, cookies or site data after you close them. A Tor tab does not enter the closed-tab list or Rewind.
They never join tab groups and cannot be pinned, moved to another window or previewed.
Extensions are off in Tor tabs and windows.
The sidebar's Pull requests folder is not offered in Tor windows.
Pages see the UTC time zone and English (en-US) as the language, and the page area is shown at rounded sizes with a margin around it, so the window size says less about you.
Ctrl+Shift+T can reopen the newest closed Tor tab as a Tor tab, from memory, until you close that window. It cannot bring back a tab from before a new identity.
Tor tabs are not saved when you quit. They come back only if you turned on the vault.

What Acira does not provide

No hiding of your browser fingerprint, and no Tor Browser-grade fingerprint resistance.
No promise that you cannot be identified. If you sign in to a site, it knows who you are, and a site can still recognize your browser.
No VPN. Acira does not provide one. It can control a VPN app you already have. See DNS, proxy and VPN.

Last updated November 8, 2026