New Release: Tor Browser 9.0a6

Update 6/9 0600UTC: Added another known issue.
Tor Browser 9.0a6 is now available from the Tor Browser Alpha download page and also from our distribution directory.
Note: this is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. For everyone else, we recommend downloading the latest stable release instead.
This release features important security updates to Firefox.
This is the first alpha release based on Firefox ESR68, and therefore contains several important changes such as the rebasing of our Firefox patches, toolchain updates, integration of Torbutton directly into the browser and updates to Tor Launcher to make it compatible with ESR68.
If you find any issue with this release, please help us by reporting them so we can fix as much as we can before the first stable release based on ESR68, which is planned for October 22.
Known issues:
- Tor Browser 9.0a6 is not reproducible on some platforms right now: We have issues on 32bit Linux, Windows, and Android. Those are planned to be fixed in the next alpha release, though, to give the usual guarantees reproducible builds aim to provide.
- New Identity and the bridge configuration in the browser are not easily accessible anymore as we removed the onion button. We are currently working on a replacement for both: New Identity will be exposed directly in the toolbar and the bridge configuration gets integrated in the Firefox settings. For New Identity please use the shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+U) for now or the item in the hamburger menu.
- We already have a number of known tickets we need to work on in the coming weeks. The most important ones are tagged with the tbb-9.0-must-alpha keyword. Moreover, we have accumulated Firefox 68 ESR related issues over the time that can easily be queried with our ff68-esr keyword.
The full changelog since Tor Browser 9.0a5 is:
- All platforms
- Update Firefox to 68.1.0esr
- Update NoScript to 11.0.3
- Bug 30429: Rebase patches for Firefox 68 ESR
- Bug 10760: Integrate Torbutton into Tor Browser directly
- Bug 25856: Remove XUL overlays from Torbutton
- Bug 31322: Fix about:tor assertion failure debug builds
- Bug 31520: Remove monthly giving banner from Tor Browser
- Bug 29430: Add support for meek_lite bridges to bridgeParser
- Bug 28561: Migrate "About Tor Browser" dialog to tor-browser
- Bug 30683: Prevent detection of locale via some *.properties
- Bug 31298: Backport patch for #24056
- Bug 9336: Odd wyswig schemes without isolation for browserspy.dk
- Bug 27601: Browser notifications are not working anymore
- Bug 30845: Make sure internal extensions are enabled
- Bug 28896: Enable extensions in private browsing by default
- Bug 31563: Reload search extensions if extensions.enabledScopes has changed
- Bug 31396: Fix communication with NoScript for security settings
- Bug 31142: Fix crash of tab and messing with about:newtab
- Bug 29049: Backport JS Poison Patch
- Bug 25214: Canvas data extraction on locale pdf file should be allowed
- Bug 30657: Locale is leaked via title of link tag on non-html page
- Bug 31015: Disabling SVG hides UI icons in extensions
- Bug 31357: Retire Tom's default obfs4 bridge
- Windows + OS X + Linux
- Update Tor to 0.4.1.5
- Update Tor Launcher to 0.2.19.3
- Bug 29430: Use obfs4proxy's meek_lite with utls instead of meek
- Bug 31251: Security Level button UI polish
- Bug 31344: Register SecurityLevelPreference's 'unload' callback
- Bug 12774: Selecting meek in the browser UI is broken
- Build System:
- Bug 31465: Bump Go to 1.12.9
- Windows
- OS X
- Linux
- Bug 31403: Bump snowflake commit to cd650fa009
- Android
- Build System:
- All Platforms:
- Bug 30585: Provide standalone clang 8 project across all platforms
- Bug 30376: Use Rust 1.34 for Tor Browser 9
- Bug 30490: Add cbindgen project for building Firefox 68 ESR/Fennec 68
- Bug 30701: Add nodejs project for building Firefox 68 ESR/Fennec 68
- Bug 30734: Add nasm project for building Firefox 68 ESR/Fennec 68
- Windows
- OS X
- Linux
- Android
- Bug 30324: Android toolchain update for Fennec 68
- Bug 31173: Update android-toolchain project to match Firefox
- Bug 31389: Update Android Firefox to build with Clang
- Bug 31388: Update Rust project for Android
- Bug 30665: Get Firefox 68 ESR working with latest android toolchain
- Bug 30460: Update TOPL project to use Firefox 68 toolchain
- Bug 30461: Update tor-android-service project to use Firefox 68 toolchain
- Bug 28753: Use Gradle with --offline when building the browser part
- Bug 30324: Android toolchain update for Fennec 68
- All Platforms:
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I feel like something is…
I feel like something is wrong with this release.
not only did features like the "new identity" button disappear. and the browser feels more like a vanilla firefox than torbrowser (with stuff like pocket enabled, and settings changed).
but firefox.exe is also suddenly creating a firewall alert, trying to connect to a few IPs at port 80.