New Alpha Release: Tor Browser 16.0a6

Feedback Tor Browser Alpha Feedback
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by ma1 | May 7, 2026

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Tor Browser 16.0a6 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

⚠️ Reminder: The Tor Browser Alpha release-channel is for testing only. As such, Tor Browser Alpha is not intended for general use because it is more likely to include bugs affecting usability, security, and privacy.

Moreover, Tor Browser Alphas are now based on Firefox's betas. Please read more about this important change in the Future of Tor Browser Alpha blog post.

If you are an at-risk user, require strong anonymity, or just want a reliably-working browser, please stick with the stable release channel.

Send us your feedback

If you find a bug or have a suggestion for how we could improve this release, please let us know.

Full changelog

The full changelog since Tor Browser 16.0a5 is:

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-160a6
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I have noticed the following change in behavior in 16.0a6 and would be grateful if someone could confirm whether or not this is intended:

In 16.0a5 and previous releases (both alpha & stable) I was able to stop Tor Launcher from automatically launching the bundled little-t-tor by setting the following preference to false: extensions.torlauncher.start_tor(the default is true):

starttor

When I then start Tor Browser I see the following message and the browser does not attempt to start tor (screenshot is 16.0a5):

ConnectionNotManaged
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In 16.0a6 when I do the same I see the same message but Tor Launcher appears to try and launch tor anyway and after a few seconds I see a dialog popup saying tor has exited during startup:

popup
popup622×489 37.7 KB

If this is intended behavior can someone please explain how I stop Tor Launcher for starting tor automatically in 16.0a6, as I couldn’t find any explicit reference to such a change in the ChangeLog.

Test OS is Linux Mint 22.3, I downloaded Tor Browser from Tor Project | Download