OnionHop connected in TUN/VPN mode, with whatismyipaddress.com confirming the Tor exit IP

Why Would You Route Everything Through Tor?

Most people meet Tor through the Tor Browser, and that’s fine — until you realize only the browser is protected. Your email client, your chat apps, that random Electron app phoning home — all of it still travels over your regular connection with your real IP stamped on every packet.
OnionHop closes that gap. Instead of anonymizing one browser tab, it can wrap your entire machine in Tor’s three-hop relay routing. Your ISP sees encrypted Tor traffic and nothing else. Websites see a Tor exit node in whatever country you picked. And unlike a commercial VPN, there’s no company logging your sessions on the other end — Tor’s whole design avoids a single point of trust.
The catch with system-wide Tor has always been the setup: config files, torrc edits, firewall rules. OnionHop’s pitch is simple — it does all of that behind a clean dashboard with a single Connect button. During my time with it, that pitch held up.

Proxy Mode vs TUN/VPN Mode: Pick Your Poison

Home screen with the Mode dropdown open, showing Proxy Mode and TUN/VPN Mode plus the exit country list

Proxy Mode — the everyday option

This is the recommended starting point, and honestly it’s what most people should use. OnionHop starts Tor locally and points your system proxy at a SOCKS5 endpoint on 127.0.0.1:9050. No administrator rights, no drivers, nothing invasive. Any proxy-aware app — browsers included — instantly rides the Tor network. In my test, a fresh connection came up in about 12 seconds and the IP checker confirmed a Tor exit right away.

Connected in Proxy Mode — Tor is running while apps use the SOCKS port directly

TUN/VPN Mode — the strict option

Flip to TUN/VPN Mode and OnionHop builds a genuine system-wide tunnel using sing-box (with the Wintun driver on Windows). Every application gets routed through Tor at the operating-system level, whether it respects proxy settings or not. This mode needs admin rights, but it buys you something Proxy Mode can’t guarantee: DNS lookups stay inside the tunnel, so your ISP never sees which domains you’re resolving. If DNS leaks keep you up at night, this is your mode.

Hybrid — split tunneling for the picky

There’s a third path worth knowing about. In TUN/VPN Mode you can enable Hybrid routing, which is per-app split tunneling: send your browser through Tor while your game launcher connects directly. It’s the sensible compromise when full-system Tor slows something down or breaks a picky application.
A quick word on speed: this is Tor, not a paid VPN. Expect throughput suited to browsing, reading, and messaging — not 4K streaming. That’s the trade for genuine anonymity, and OnionHop is upfront about it.

Blocked Network? Bridges Have Your Back

Network settings tab showing the Tor bridges toggle, bridge type dropdown (obfs4) and bridge source options

This is where OnionHop pulls ahead of simpler Tor front-ends. If your ISP or country blocks direct Tor connections, the app carries a full toolbox of pluggable transports: obfs4, snowflake, webtunnel, conjure, meek, and dnstt. These disguise Tor traffic as ordinary web traffic so filters wave it through.
Better still, you don’t have to hunt for working bridges by hand. A built-in scanner tests bridges from your own network and reports which ones actually connect. There’s also a Smart Connect toggle that races strategies automatically and picks whatever works for your location — genuinely useful if you have no idea whether your network blocks Tor or how. And if you already have private bridge lines from bridges.torproject.org, paste them in and OnionHop will use those instead.
Secure DNS combined with SNI-based fronting rounds out the censored-network story, making this one of the more complete circumvention setups I’ve seen in a free desktop tool.

Control Freaks Welcome: The Advanced Tab

Advanced settings showing entry node, exit location, and manual guard/middle/exit fingerprint fields

Casual users can ignore this tab entirely, but tinkerers will appreciate what’s here. You can pin your exit to a specific country (the list shows live relay counts per nation — Austria had 235 when I checked), set an entry node, or go full control-freak and specify exact relay fingerprints for the guard, middle, and exit positions, with strict toggles that fail the connection rather than fall back if your chosen relay is unavailable.
The app fairly warns you that manual circuit shaping can hurt both anonymity and reliability — which it can — but having the option in a GUI instead of a torrc file is a treat. You can even choose between the classic Tor engine and Arti, the Tor Project’s newer Rust-based runtime, from a dropdown.
Rounding things out: a kill switch (strict TUN mode only) that instantly blocks outbound traffic if Tor drops, a New Identity button for a fresh circuit, per-session stats for data transferred and circuits built, theme and accent-color options, and a companion command-line client that runs the same engine headlessly for servers and scripts.

General settings tab showing auto-connect on launch, tray behavior, theme and accent color options

Things to Keep in Mind

A few honest caveats. First, OnionHop is an independent project — it is not made or endorsed by The Tor Project, even though it uses the official Tor engines underneath. Second, .onion sites still need a Tor-aware client; the developer recommends Tor Browser for those (on Android, the Tor Project’s own Tor VPN Beta covers similar ground). Third, the kill switch only works in strict TUN mode with admin rights, so Proxy Mode users shouldn’t assume leak-proof behavior.
If Tor’s speed doesn’t suit your use case, a conventional service like Windscribe’s free VPN tier trades some anonymity for a lot more bandwidth. And if you’re curious about Tor alternatives altogether, our look at I2P for anonymous browsing is a good next read. Desktop privacy fans may also want to pair OnionHop with a telemetry blocker like O&O ShutUp10++ for defense on the local side too.

How to Get Started (2 Minutes, Tops)

OnionHop’s Home screen before connecting — pick a mode, exit location and bridge source, then hit Connect

⬇ Download OnionHop (Free)

Frequently Asked Questions

Have you tried routing your whole system through Tor? Tell us how OnionHop worked on your network in the comments — especially if you’re behind a restrictive connection and the bridges saved the day.