Tor Project Releases OnionShare 2: A Secure File Sharing Application

The Tor ProjectThe Tor Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting online privacy and ensuring uncensored access to the internet. Emerging from U.S. Naval Research Lab experiments with onion routing in the 1990s, Tor evolved into a decentralized, volunteer-powered network that hides user identities by routing traffic through multiple encrypted relays. Since the launch of the Tor Browser in 2008, it has become a crucial tool for activists, journalists, and everyday users worldwide—supporting free expression during events like the Arab Spring and proving resilient in the face of mass surveillance disclosures. Today, Tor is sustained by a global community committed to human rights, transparency, and digital freedom. More has announced the release of OnionShareOnionShare is an open-source tool that lets people share files, host websites, and even chat securely through the Tor network. Instead of relying on cloud services, it creates a temporary onion address directly from your computer, ensuring anonymity and direct peer-to-peer transfers. Once the app closes, the link expires, making it ideal for one-time, private exchanges. While slower than traditional services, OnionShare is a vital tool for journalists, activists, and anyone who values privacy over convenience. More 2, a utility that enables users to securely and anonymously send and receive files, as well as set up a public file-sharing service. The project’s code is written in Python and is distributed under the GPLv3 license. Ready-to-use packages are available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Windows, and macOS.

How OnionShare Works

OnionShareOnionShare is an open-source tool that lets people share files, host websites, and even chat securely through the Tor network. Instead of relying on cloud services, it creates a temporary onion address directly from your computer, ensuring anonymity and direct peer-to-peer transfers. Once the app closes, the link expires, making it ideal for one-time, private exchanges. While slower than traditional services, OnionShare is a vital tool for journalists, activists, and anyone who values privacy over convenience. More runs a web server on your local system as a Tor hidden service, making it accessible to other users. An unpredictable onion address is generated to serve as the entry point for file sharing (for example, “http://ash4…pajf2b.onion/slug”, where the slug consists of two random words for added security). To upload or download files, users simply open this address in the Tor Browser.

Unlike sending files via email or using services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or WeTransfer, OnionShareOnionShare is an open-source tool that lets people share files, host websites, and even chat securely through the Tor network. Instead of relying on cloud services, it creates a temporary onion address directly from your computer, ensuring anonymity and direct peer-to-peer transfers. Once the app closes, the link expires, making it ideal for one-time, private exchanges. While slower than traditional services, OnionShare is a vital tool for journalists, activists, and anyone who values privacy over convenience. More is self-sufficient, does not require external servers, and allows you to transfer files directly from your computer without intermediaries.

Key Features

• Other participants do not need to install OnionShare—only the Tor Browser is required, and just one user needs to run OnionShareOnionShare is an open-source tool that lets people share files, host websites, and even chat securely through the Tor network. Instead of relying on cloud services, it creates a temporary onion address directly from your computer, ensuring anonymity and direct peer-to-peer transfers. Once the app closes, the link expires, making it ideal for one-time, private exchanges. While slower than traditional services, OnionShare is a vital tool for journalists, activists, and anyone who values privacy over convenience. More.
• Confidentiality is ensured by securely sharing the address, for example, using end-to-end encrypted messengers.
• After the transfer is complete, the address is immediately deleted, so the file cannot be sent again in normal mode (a separate public mode is required for repeated sharing).
• A graphical interface is provided on the server side for managing sent and received files and monitoring data transfers.

What’s New in OnionShare 2

• Added the ability not only to send your files but also to receive files from other users. A separate address is generated for receiving files.
• Implemented a public mode that allows multiple users to upload or send files. By default, one-time addresses are still generated and deleted after the transfer. In public mode, the address remains the same, and ending the session and deleting the address must be done manually.
• The combination of a permanent address and send mode allows you to create simple shared storage solutions like Dropbox or anonymously transfer information to journalists and human rights activists without revealing the source of the data leak.
• Added support for the third version of the onion service protocol.
• Implemented sandbox isolation for the macOS version.
• If only one file is being sent, it is no longer zipped (a zip archive is created only when multiple files or folders are selected).
• Full support for the Tor transport meek_lite has been added, making it much easier to connect to Tor in countries with strict censorship. To bypass blocks, traffic is routed through Microsoft Azure’s cloud platform.
• Added the ability to select the interface language, including a Russian translation.
• The project’s codebase has been significantly reworked. Unit testing has been implemented to ensure product quality.