Getting started with Tor

This search engine exists in two places: this website, and the same service as an onion address that opens only inside Tor. Everything on this page is free, needs no account, and applies to any onion site, not only to ours.

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Step 1: Tor Browser

Tor Browser is a free browser from the Tor Project that hides your IP address from the sites you visit and can open .onion addresses. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and it needs no configuration: start it and it connects on its own, a few seconds after the first launch.

  1. Open the Tor Project website and choose "Download Tor Browser".
  2. On the download page, pick the section for your system: Windows, macOS, Linux or Android.
  3. Download the installer and run it. Tor Browser does not install itself into your system: it unpacks into its own folder and runs from there.
  4. Start Tor Browser and wait for the Connect button, then click it. The first connection takes a few seconds, and the browser opens on its own when it is ready.
  5. That is everything: from now on every .onion address opens in this browser, with no setting to change.

Download it from the Tor Project itself and from nowhere else. Copies offered elsewhere, in app stores you do not recognise or as "faster Tor" packages, are regularly modified to spy on the people who install them, and this is the one program where that costs you the anonymity you came for. The official site, and the only place to get it, is https://torproject.org/

Step 2: opening an onion address

Paste the address into the address bar and press enter. Onion addresses are 56 characters long and end in .onion, and they work in Tor Browser with no plugin, no proxy setting and no registration. If a link in our results points to an onion address, it opens the same way. On this website those links pass through our gateway page first, which shows you the address before you continue; inside Tor Browser they open directly.

An onion address that does not load is usually the site, not you: hidden services go offline, get overloaded or move to a new address without warning. Try it once more, then try another link before you assume your setup is wrong. We test the addresses we index, but a service can disappear between two crawls.

Our own onion service

This site is reachable as an onion service as well as on the clearnet: the same search, the same results, and no clearnet domain involved when you use it. The addresses are below.

What Tor does, and what it does not do

Tor hides your IP address from the sites you visit, including this one, and it makes the connection hard to block at the level of a network provider. It does not make you anonymous to a site that you log in to, where you type an email address or where you pay with a card, and it cannot protect a device that is already compromised. We do not store your searches and we do not ask who you are.

Most onion sites are run by people nobody can hold responsible, so treat one the way you would treat a stranger who wants something from you: do not install software an onion site offers you, do not give personal details, and do not pay for anything you cannot afford to lose. If an onion site or a search is about harming people, our moderation pages explain what we do about it and where help is.

If a search worries you or you need help, these pages say where to find it: Self-Help & Support, Help after sexual violence, Drug help & treatment.