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I just installed the TorBrowser (v. 6.0.1) on my mac (OS 10.11.5) - went to the torproject page and downloaded the installer for mac. I am seeing instructions online about changing my torrc file in order to set which country I want to exit the Tor network from, but I can't find a file called torrc.

I've tried "locate torrc" but it doesn't find a file. I did find torrc-defaults in /Applications/TorBrowser.app/Contents/Resources/TorBrowser/Tor, but there's no plain old torrc file.

The Tor FAQ lists this:

If you installed Tor Browser, look for Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/torrc inside your Tor Browser directory. On OS X, you must right-click or command-click on the Tor Browser icon, and select "Show Package Contents" before the Tor Browser directories become visible.

Tor puts the torrc file in /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc if you compiled tor from source, and /etc/tor/torrc or /etc/torrc if you installed a pre-built package.

I've looked in all those places and I'm not finding a file called torrc.

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  • I also looked for a folder called "TorBrowser-Data" after seeing on another site that it might be the place to look, but I couldn't find that either.
    – Joe Montibello
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 18:11
  • I tryed this out, but it did not work. I still cannot find the torcc file... I looked for it mannually via navigating to "go" in the tab menu, hitting alt, selecting library, and so forth... I also tryed what it said on the TOR website. Nothing is working for me. please help. I need to access the torcc file to edit my proxy configurations manually...
    – Anonynoob
    Commented Dec 31, 2016 at 1:43
  • For the case anyone else is looking: I installed Tor through Homebrew, and apparently the torrc-file is supposed to be located in /usr/local/etc/tor when taking that path. There's none in my installation, but sample files are there, so I suppose it's a correct location.
    – nyyppanen
    Commented Mar 11, 2018 at 20:02

2 Answers 2

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I found it.

~/Library/Application Support/TorBrowser-Data/torrc

I got the info from a bug tracking ticket: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13252

Thanks to https://tor.stackexchange.com/users/12737/canonizing-ironize who gave a pointer to the ticket in the answer to another question.

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  • Thank's! I was updating my script Tor-ExitNode-changer and can't figure out why stop working... Different torrc path was the cause. Fixed now.
    – gmo
    Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 17:31
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    TorBrowser-Data/torrc not present in Application support folder on mac sierra 10.12.2 and tor 6.5
    – Vihaan Verma
    Commented May 14, 2017 at 10:25
  • I thought that too, but the folder was generate after I startet it the first time.
    – Daniel Gerber
    Commented Jul 18, 2017 at 14:32
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    Slight change in Sierra, it is in ~/Library/Application Support/TorBrowser-Data/Tor/torrc
    – james-see
    Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 13:24
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    On Catalina (10.15.7), there does seem to be a torrc, but it is just 986 bytes & is not at all like what's given [gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/tree/src/config/torrc.sample.in] here Any clue where to find torrc. I did already try sudo find \ -name torrc & the only got: /System/Volumes/Data/Users/admin/Library/Application\ Support/TorBrowser-Data/Tor/ & /Users/admin/Library/Application\ Support/TorBrowser-Data/Tor/ Neither had a torrc like the one in the sample :( More info: Tor version 0.4.4.5 (git-24e808e946e741d0). Tor Browser: 10.0.2
    – qre0ct
    Commented Oct 22, 2020 at 14:55
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I'm still curious why others find the TorBrowser-Data directory in ~/Library/Application Support/ while I have it in the same directory where I keep the TorBrowser.app (note same dir as the app not in the app bundle). I've moved my TorBrowser-Data dir into ~/Library/Application Support/ but I still need a symlink in the app folder to get to it. Otherwise launching the app just recreates a fresh copy of the TorBrowser-Data dir.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact I use Snow Leopard 10.6.7. It doesn't really bother me other than I'm just curious in the difference in behavior from others.

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    Never mind, I just figured out what the app is doing. It does look for ~/Library/Application Support/TorBrowser-Data when the app is placed in /Applications. Otherwise it looks for (and creates if necessary) a TorBrowser-Data dir in the same dir as the app when the app is not located in /Applications.
    – xyzzy
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 22:58

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