Proxy Refused if link from other app opens Android TBB

This is a known issue. Mostly happens because users set Tor Browser Android as their default browser. However, we don't support making TBA as default browser as then all of the applications will launch their urls into TBA which might eventually break connections.

https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-32/

Workaround : Remove TBA as default browser and reopen.

closed

@kulsoom.zahra @gaba You misunderstood. The ticket is not talking about making Tor Browser the default browser. It talks about selecting Tor Browser in Android's pop-up dialog one time, manually, for opening a specific link.

reopened

changed the description

added Android label

If other applications try to launch their urls into TBA, it might break connections and render 'Proxy Server Refused Connection' error.

@kulsoom.zahra On desktop, almost every link is able to be copied and pasted between applications. But on mobile, a significant portion of links are behind elements (underlined text but also buttons and images) that respond to only one type of tap, and/or access to copy the link is unavailable in a limited UI.

I have this issue too, using Tor browser 11.0.14 (96.3.0-Release) on Android 7.0.

When the tor browser gets opened with a link, it opens the URL, but shows the "proxyserver refused connection" page.

Then if you tap the URL bar, the "connect" page shows. However, if you click that connect button, the tor service does start, but the app then closes itself and you return to the previous app. (not sure if this is a crash or just the app finishing its "task")

Some screenshots:

added Icebox label

Makes sense, we need a way to force new pages to open the connection UI when not bootstrapped, similar to how it works on desktop.

Why is this put in the ice box?

not focusing on android atm

mentioned in issue #41017

marked this issue as related to #41017

I've got the info on the "Proxy Server Refused Connection" bug from the user who permitted me to post here the details.

The bug was firstly reported in mid-March 2022, and since then, it still appears while using TBA. The phone - OPPO a9 The default browser - Chrome
ISP - different ones tested, the bug still occur

The user uses bridges to connect to Tor, and at this stage, everything seems normal. But when after the bootstrapping, they try to use DuckDuckGo (or another search engine), the TBA shows a "Proxy Server Refused Connection" picture. The attempt to just copy the website address (https://forum.torproject.net/) and paste it into the address bar gave the same result - "Proxy Server Refused Connection".

If you have any questions - you can ask, and I will transfer them to the user.

Additional info - the same problem is with the TBA Alpha

mentioned in issue #30572 (closed)

mentioned in issue #30573 (closed)

removed Icebox label

added Roadmap::Future label

We include Tor Browser with CalyxOS, and this part working would be very useful for us, so that we can have things open links in Tor Browser directly.

An example is https://gitlab.com/CalyxOS/calyxos/-/issues/1064

This is how we're doing it:

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(content));
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK |
    Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_EXCLUDE_FROM_RECENTS | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_HISTORY);
intent.setPackage("org.torproject.torbrowser");
startActivity(intent);

It runs into the same problem. If there's an alternate way to handle opening links, or if this could be fixed, that'd be appreciated.