I’m using macOS Catalina (10.15) for the following instructions but it should work on almost any macOS version.

Tor Browser

The most simple way to surf anonymously with Tor is to just grab Tor Browser. It’s a modified version of Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) with Tor and some extensions (Torbutton, TorLauncher, NoScript, and HTTPS-Everywhere) built right in. Upon start, Tor Browser automatically starts the required Tor background processes and routes traffic through the Tor network. That’s the way to go if you want the highest level of protection without much further configuration.

But it’s based on an older version of Firefox and there might be more you want to do anonymously on your machine than just browsing the web, like accessing resources via the Terminal or any other app. Or just use the browser you’re used to.

For this you need to have Tor installed on your system and additionally set specific proxy values in your network preferences after you’ve started Tor.

Install Tor

Contrary to the weirdly outdated install instructions on Tor’s website (hey, remember Macports?), installing Tor on macOS is super simple with Homebrew.

In your Terminal execute:

brew install tor

Then you can start it up by running:

tor

Congratulations, you now have Tor running on your system. But none of your network traffic is routed through it yet.

In order for all your system traffic being routed through Tor you need to adjust your system’s network proxy settings which you can either do visually in the System Preferences or programmatically via macOS’s builtin networksetup.

Set network proxy settings via System Preferences

You can do this under System Preferences > Network by creating a specific Tor network location for it:

1. From Location dropdown at the top, select Edit Locations…
2. Create a new location by hitting the plus button and name it Tor. Hitting Done will select the new location which is now ready to be configured.
3. Go to Advanced > Proxies and activate SOCKS Proxy and add those values:

• SOCKS proxy server: localhost
• Port: 9050

After hitting OK & Apply at the initial network screen, you can easily switch to this newly created location from your menu bar under  > Location whenever you start up Tor.

Switching to the Tor location routes all network traffic on your system through Tor. Note that you have to repeat those steps for every other network interface if you use, say, Wi-Fi and Ethernet interchangeably.

All in one go: start Tor & set network proxy settings automatically

When you’re already in the Terminal to start up Tor, additionally setting the network settings involves a lot of fiddling around. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Thankfully macOS provides a way to programmatically set those proxy values via the networksetup utility. I’ve found a nice script for this but running it opened multiple admin password prompts. So I extended it a bit to make it more user friendly.

In a nutshell, this shell script asks you for your admin password upfront, starts up Tor, and sets all required proxy network settings automatically:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# 'Wi-Fi' or 'Ethernet' or 'Display Ethernet'
INTERFACE=Wi-Fi

# Ask for the administrator password upfront
sudo -v

# Keep-alive: update existing `sudo` time stamp until finished
while true; do sudo -n true; sleep 60; kill -0 "$$" || exit; done 2>/dev/null &

# trap ctrl-c and call disable_proxy()
function disable_proxy() {
    sudo networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate $INTERFACE off
    echo "$(tput setaf 64)" #green
    echo "SOCKS proxy disabled."
    echo "$(tput sgr0)" # color reset
}
trap disable_proxy INT

# Let's roll
sudo networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxy $INTERFACE 127.0.0.1 9050 off
sudo networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate $INTERFACE on

echo "$(tput setaf 64)" # green
echo "SOCKS proxy 127.0.0.1:9050 enabled."
echo "$(tput setaf 136)" # orange
echo "Starting Tor..."
echo "$(tput sgr0)" # color reset

tor

Save this script under something like tor.sh in one of your sourced bin folders, make it executable with chmod + x and use it as a replacement for the general tor command. So you can just run

tor.sh

and Tor should run smoothly on your system without additional configuration:

Verify you’re indeed browsing over the Tor network by going to check.torproject.org.

When you’re done, just exit the script with ctrl + c and the network settings will be reverted to their previous configuration.

Non-standard apps

Some apps are just not good Mac citizens and use their own network settings, ignoring macOS system network proxy settings. E.g. older versions of Google Chrome were using their own custom network settings and therefore were not routing their web traffic through the proxy configured in System Preferences.

But the most recent Chrome version automatically picks up macOS’s native proxy settings, as does the most recent version of Firefox.

Always check your Tor connection with whatever app you’re using and if needed set the proxy preferences manually in the respective app with:

• SOCKS proxy server: localhost
• Port: 9050