Opening .onion addresses

Paste an .onion address into Chrome or Safari and you will get a 'site can't be reached' style error. That is not the address being wrong. Normal browsers talk to the open internet directly; .onion addresses only exist inside the Tor network. The browser has to be the one that routes traffic through Tor, and only the Tor browsers do that properly.

Desktop: Tor Browser for Windows, macOS and Linux from get.torproject.org, the page you reach by typing the address or searching 'Tor Project'. It installs like any other program and does not need an account to run.

Android: Tor Browser, available on F-Droid and the Play Store. It behaves like the desktop version, a little more battery-hungry, and the same addresses work.

iOS: the App Store's Tor option is the Onion Browser. Same addresses, same queue page, same rules as on every page here: only .onion.

Wherever it runs, the workflow is identical: copy one of the three addresses from the list above, paste it into the address bar, wait.

Your first connection to any onion builds a fresh route through several relays, and an unwarmed route is slow. The address bar spins, the page is white, nothing looks broken, and it takes a minute or two. This is the normal state of the first visit, not a sign of a problem. Later visits on the same machine are usually faster because the route is already built and parts are cached.

Two messages mean specific things. 'Relay tunnel build failed' means the route through Tor could not be made right now: wait, tap the onion icon in the toolbar to build a new circuit, or try the other AWazon address. 'Site can't be reached' after a full minute usually means the same: your circuit, not the address. Switch addresses before you switch conclusions.

A clearnet gateway is a normal website that opens onions for you, so the URL you see ends in something like .onion.cab. The convenience is real: no Tor Browser, works on any phone. The price is that the gateway machine sits in the middle of the connection. It sees which address you open, and it relays everything you type, including a login. For reading a public page that is a decision you can make. For typing a market password it is the wrong one, and the whole point of the onion address is the road, not just the destination.