The Tor Project has unveiled Snowflake Volunteer, an innovative Android application designed to empower users to contribute a portion of their internet bandwidth to assist individuals in circumventing online censorship. This initiative aims to broaden the network of volunteer-operated Snowflake proxies while granting users greater control over their device’s battery, network, and connection usage.
Snowflake operates as a Tor pluggable transport, cleverly disguising user traffic to mimic a video call. It routes this traffic through ephemeral proxies managed by volunteers, making it significantly more challenging for censors to detect and block compared to traditional traffic that flows through a fixed set of servers.
The app’s development was spearheaded by Bloco, a Portuguese Android studio that approached Tor’s anti-censorship team with the vision of creating a standalone tool for Snowflake volunteering. This concept was inspired by Bloco’s collaboration with the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), where developers witnessed firsthand how activists and NGOs depend on tools that facilitate censorship circumvention to maintain connectivity.
In the past, users could operate Snowflake proxies through various means, including browser extensions, website embeds, desktop command-line tools, or Orbot’s Kindness Mode on Android. However, the introduction of the dedicated app is anticipated to attract a larger pool of volunteers, especially considering that the Snowflake broker recorded an average of approximately 146,000 unique volunteer proxy IP addresses daily in the first half of 2026, with about one-third linked to Orbot’s Kindness Mode.
Built for background operation
Snowflake Volunteer leverages mobile Tor components developed by the Guardian Project, including IPtProxy, a library that facilitates the integration of Tor and its pluggable transports into mobile applications. By utilizing these existing components, Bloco concentrated on minimizing battery consumption, ensuring the service remains active in the background, and making the app user-friendly for those unfamiliar with Tor’s infrastructure.
Volunteers have the flexibility to configure the app to operate solely on unmetered networks like Wi-Fi, activate it only while the device is charging, and limit the number of simultaneous connections they support. Once activated, the app connects with the Snowflake broker and automatically links users seeking temporary proxies to the Tor network, eliminating the need for volunteers to approve individual connections.
Available on Google Play and F-Droid
Snowflake Volunteer is readily accessible through both Google Play and F-Droid, with its source code available for independent download and building. Prospective volunteers are encouraged to consider their mobile data limits, battery usage, local regulations, and workplace or school network policies before enabling the service. By restricting the app’s operation to Wi-Fi and charging periods, users can mitigate its impact on their devices.
To ensure optimal performance and security, volunteers should only download the app from its official distribution pages and keep it updated to benefit from the latest enhancements to Snowflake and Tor’s censorship-circumvention components.
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