We are pleased to announce another public beta release of Tor Messenger. This release addresses a number of stability and usability issues, and includes the default bridge configurations for pluggable transports.

The initial public release [0] was a success in that it garnered a lot of useful feedback. We tried to respond to all your concerns in the comments of the blog post [1] but also collected and aggregated a FAQ of the most common questions [2].

* Before Upgrading

Before upgrading to the new release, you will need to backup your OTR keys or simply generate new ones. Please see the following steps to back them up [3].

In our eagerness to build on work done by Tor Browser, we made the decision to store your profile directory inside the application bundle. This complicates matters when you want to use the same accounts and keys across updates, especially while we don't have an automatic updater [4].

Also, as was vociferously pointed out by some of our early adopters, this probably isn't a very intuitive user experience. Copying the extracted application to someone else's computer would unknowingly transfer your accounts and OTR keys. It's unclear if this is commonly done and we'd love feedback on this point to understand the urgency of the issue.

In future releases, we plan on revisiting this decision. The number one item on our roadmap is porting Tor Browser's updater patches [5] so that keeping Tor Messenger up-to-date is seamless and automatic. We also plan to add a UI to make importing OTR keys and accounts from Pidgin, and other clients, as easy as possible [6].

* Downloads

Please note that Tor Messenger is _still in beta_. The purpose of this release is to help test the application and provide feedback. *At-risk users should not depend on it for their privacy and safety*.

Linux (32-bit) https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b4/tor-messenger-linux32-0.1.0...

Linux (64-bit) https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b4/tor-messenger-linux64-0.1.0...

Windows https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b4/tormessenger-install-0.1.0b...

OS X (Mac) https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b4/TorMessenger-0.1.0b4-osx64_...

sha256sums.txt https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b4/sha256sums.txt

sha256sums.txt.asc https://dist.torproject.org/tormessenger/0.1.0b4/sha256sums.txt.asc

The sha256sums.txt file containing hashes of the bundles is signed with the key 0x6887935AB297B391 (fingerprint: 3A0B 3D84 3708 9613 6B84 5E82 6887 935A B297 B391).

* Changelog

Here is the complete changelog since v0.1.0b2:

Tor Messenger 0.1.0b4 -- November 22 2015 All Platforms Bug 17492: Include default bridges configuration Use tor and the pluggable transports from tor-browser 5.0.4 Bug 17552: Instantbird should handle XMPP message stanzas with subjects ctypes-otr Bug 17539: Pass username when interpolating resent string Bug 15179: Add an OTR Preferences item to the Tools menu Use the FIREFOX_42_0_RELEASE tag on mozilla-release Use the THUNDERBIRD_42_0b2_RELEASE tag on comm-release Bug 16489: Prevent automatic logins at startup Update Tor Messenger logo in Tor Launcher Mac Bug 16476: Themes preference is positioned incorrectly Bug 17456: Application hang when navigating the preferences menu

Tor Messenger 0.1.0b3 -- October 30 2015 Windows Bug 17453: Fix Tor Messenger crash when starting up in Windows

[0] - https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-messenger-beta-chat-over-tor-easily/ [1] - https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-messenger-beta-chat-over-tor-easily/#co... [2] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorMessenger/FAQ [3] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorMessenger/FAQ#Wherearem... [4] - https://bugs.torproject.org/13861 [5] - https://bugs.torproject.org/14388 [6] - https://bugs.torproject.org/16526