Deprecation of TOR Browser, Mullvad Browser, and nightly releases

[zhom]

While I'm a big fan of both the TOR project and Mullvad the company, I believer that adding support for these browsers to Donut was a mistake. Mullvad Browser is a fork of TOR Browser without the network features, and TOR Browser was design to be is secure as possible, including running on a compromised system, which makes it difficult to control programmatically.

For example, both Mullvad and TOR profiles in Donut can only properly handle programmatic link opening if only one instance is running. While I'm sure it is possible to implement opening any urls in any number of these browsers correctly, it will take a considerable amount of effort and even more code that needs to be maintained and tested.

Because of this, I’m removing support for both Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser. Additionally, nightly releases for all browsers are deprecated as well (except for Firefox Developers Edition) because it is a low-value, high-maintenance feature which doesn't help me create a competitive and easy-to-use anti-detect browser.

As of v0.9, deprecation is already in effect. Existing profiles will continue to work as usual, but new ones cannot be created and related code will be gradually removed going forward. Same applies to nightly releases. As a sidenote, the switching releases feature was also deprecated as in most cases you can't safely switch from nightly to stable, even if you attempt to switch to a newer stable version.

Where your profiles are stored

Default locations:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/DonutBrowser/profiles/{uuid}/
• Linux: ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/DonutBrowser/profiles/{uuid}/
• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\DonutBrowser\profiles\{uuid}\

Each profile lives under a UUID directory containing:

• profile — the actual browser profile directory
• metadata.json — profile metadata, including name, browser, version, etc.

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Important note for Firefox-based profiles

For Firefox-family profiles (Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, Camoufox, Zen, Tor, Mullvad), Donut Browser generates a user.js inside the profile folder. To use the profile outside Donut Browser, delete user.js from that profile folder. After that, it behaves like a normal Firefox-family profile.

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Manual migration

1. Stop the browser which you are going to migrate.
2. Open your profiles directory.
3. In each {uuid} folder:
   • Open metadata.json to confirm name and browser. For Mullvad, it is "mullvad-browser" and for TOR, it is "tor-browser"
   • The profile to export is the {uuid}/profile directory.
4. For Firefox-family profiles: delete user.js inside the copied profile directory.
5. Use the exported profile:
   • Firefox-family: Launch with -profile /absolute/path/to/profile, or copy the contents into a new profile created by the browser’s built-in profile manager.
   • Chromium-family: Launch with --user-data-dir=/absolute/path/to/profile, or copy the contents into a new profile created by the browser’s built-in profile manager.

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Scripts to list your profiles

These scripts print each profile’s name and the absolute path to its profile directory.

macOS/Linux shell script

#!/usr/bin/env sh
# macOS/Linux: Print Name, Browser, ReleaseType, AbsoluteProfilePath (no non-standard deps)
set -eu

os="$(uname 2>/dev/null || echo Unknown)"
if [ "$os" = "Darwin" ]; then
  base="$HOME/Library/Application Support"
  app_dir="DonutBrowser"
else
  base="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"
  app_dir="DonutBrowser"
fi

profiles_dir="$base/$app_dir/profiles"

if [ ! -d "$profiles_dir" ]; then
  echo "Profiles directory not found." >&2
  exit 1
fi

for uuid_dir in "$profiles_dir"/*; do
  [ -d "$uuid_dir" ] || continue
  meta="$uuid_dir/metadata.json"
  prof="$uuid_dir/profile"
  [ -f "$meta" ] && [ -d "$prof" ] || continue

  # Extract JSON string values without jq
  name="$(sed -n 's/.*"name"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p' "$meta" | head -n 1)"
  browser="$(sed -n 's/.*"browser"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p' "$meta" | head -n 1)"
  release="$(sed -n 's/.*"release_type"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p' "$meta" | head -n 1)"

  [ -n "${name:-}" ] || name="$(basename "$uuid_dir")"
  [ -n "${browser:-}" ] || browser="unknown"
  [ -n "${release:-}" ] || release="stable"

  abs_profile_path="$(cd "$prof" 2>/dev/null && pwd || true)"
  [ -n "$abs_profile_path" ] || continue

  printf '%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\n' "$name" "$browser" "$release" "$abs_profile_path"
done

Windows PowerShell script

# Windows PowerShell: Print Name, Browser, ReleaseType, AbsoluteProfilePath (no external deps)
$base = $env:LOCALAPPDATA
$profiles = Join-Path $base "DonutBrowser\profiles"
if (-not (Test-Path $profiles)) {
  Write-Error "Profiles directory not found."
  exit 1
}

Get-ChildItem -Path $profiles -Directory | ForEach-Object {
  $uuidDir = $_.FullName
  $metaPath = Join-Path $uuidDir "metadata.json"
  $profDir = Join-Path $uuidDir "profile"
  if ((Test-Path $metaPath) -and (Test-Path $profDir)) {
    $name = Split-Path -Leaf $uuidDir
    $browser = "unknown"
    $release = "stable"
    try {
      $meta = Get-Content -Raw -Path $metaPath | ConvertFrom-Json
      if ($meta.name) { $name = $meta.name }
      if ($meta.browser) { $browser = $meta.browser }
      if ($meta.release_type) { $release = $meta.release_type }
    } catch { }
    $absProfilePath = (Resolve-Path $profDir).Path
    "$name`t$browser`t$release`t$absProfilePath"
  }
}

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If you have any questions, please leave them here or send me an email at contact at donutbrowser dot com and I'll do my best to help you with the migration.