Tor not supported. use a clearnet address instead

General topics About Trezor Suite
1

I recently purchased a Safe 7 and am using Trezor Suite on my android phone. I recently set up my own bitcoin node and electrum server, and of course I would like to configure Trezor Suite to use my “bitcoin backend”. In the settings of Trezor Suite I select a “server type” of “electrum”. I paste in my onion address. And Trezor Suite says:

Tor not supported. use a clearnet address instead.

How can this possibly be the right answer? Seems to me that the developers of Trezor Suite should be supporting Tor in the app.

2

Unfortunately, at this time Tor is not supported in the mobile version of Trezor Suite. It is, however, supported in the desktop version of Trezor Suite.

As an alternative, you could use Trezor Suite for web with Tor Browser on Android as detailed in our guide Tor in Trezor Suite.

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3

Thank you NickW for your posting. I am not sure, however, whether your proposed workarounds are fully responsive to my concern. Let’s start with what I was paying for when I paid $249 for a Safe 7. What I was paying for is:

  • I should be able to operate on my choice of iPhone, Android, Windows, and more.
  • I should be able to connect the Safe 7 to my crypto app (here, Trezor Suite) using bluetooth (no need to fuss with a USB cable).
  • I should be able to use my own “bitcoin backend”, that is, my own electrum server.
  • I should be able to connect to my own electrum server via tor (rather than clearnet).

The advertised capabilities of the Safe 7 and of Trezor Suite include all of the above.

Now let’s turn to your proposed workarounds.

We start with Trezor Suite for Android, being used by all by itself. And the missing feature in Trezor Suite for Android that prompted my original post was that in Trezor Suite for Android, when I try to set up my own bitcoin backend, Trezor Suite for Android fails. It says “Tor not supported. use a clearnet address instead”. This is not acceptable and you need to implement this missing feature in Trezor Suite for Android.

Okay so one of your proposed workarounds is, I should bring along a desktop computer wherever I go, and use it instead of my Android phone to do crypto transactions. This workaround does have a few redeeming features. One is that yes, I can connect it to my own electrum server, and I can do that using tor. Not only that, I can turn on tor generally for the other non-electrum reasons to connect to the Internet, And yes, I can use bluetooth to connect my desktop computer with my Safe 7.

So far so good, except I find it inconvenient to have to carry a desktop computer with me at all times.

Okay, then we turn to a second proposed workaround. I am not sure if this is what you were proposing exactly, but here it is. I launch a tor browser on my Android phone. Maybe this provides a tor socket at local machine port 9050. Then I gather the suggestion is to launch my Trezor Suite for Android, and configure it to connect to the Internet at local machine port 9050 instead of the normal clearnet way to connect to the Internet.

There seem to be at least two things wrong with this proposed workaround. First, this actually does nothing to address the problem that Trezor Suite for Android fails to support tor as a way of connecting to an electrum server. Nothing whatsoever. Second, I have clicked around and clicked around in my Trezor Suite for Android (version 26.3.1) and I cannot find where to set it so that Trezor Suite for Android uses local machine port 9050. Can you tell me where to click to make this happen?

We then turn to what I guess might be your third proposed workaround. I should launch and run a tor browser on my Android phone. And then within the tor browser you have in mind I should launch Trezor Suite for Web. But as best I can discern, this fails badly. A main reason that it fails badly is that it looks like Trezor Suite for Web does not know how to use bluetooth to connect to the Safe 7. Instead, it looks like the only way Trezor Suite for Web knows how to connect to a hardware wallet is by USB cable. I invite you to tell me if you think I missed something about how to connect the Trezor Suite for Web to the Safe 7 by bluetooth.

Now we turn to maybe a fourth workaround. From time to time what some users will recommend is “don’t use Trezor Suite at all”. They say “use a better app” meaning a third-party Android app. Some of them recommend Sparrow, some recommend Zeus, some recommend MetaMask. But I just now did a lot of testing, and I was not able to find a third-party Android app that knows how to connect to the Safe 7 via bluetooth and that can transact bitcoin and that lets me use my own electrum server over tor. Do you know of such an app on Android?

Then I guess a fifth workaround. The Trezor Suite for Android does have a way that it can link up to other apps on my phone. Maybe there is some linkable app that can transact bitcoin and that lets me use my own electrum server over tor. For a moment I thought Rabby might do this. But as far as I can see, Rabby does not do bitcoin. It does ethereum, I guess, and some other obscure coins, but not bitcoin, is that so? Do you know of any linkable app on Android that can link to Trezor Suite for Android and that can transact bitcoin and that lets me use my own electrum server over tor? I was not able to find one.

So anyway, as far as I can see, I did not get what I paid for when I paid $249 for the Safe 7. I cannot use my own electrum server over tor with the Safe 7 on my Android phone.

4

Thank you for taking the time to lay this out in detail — I understand the expectation you’re describing, particularly around using your own backend and routing it over Tor on mobile.

It’s worth clarifying that feature parity between desktop and mobile environments is not always 1:1 — especially for more advanced setups like custom Electrum servers over Tor. Mobile platforms (and particularly Android networking constraints) introduce additional complexity, which is why some features arrive later, or in a more limited form. Setups aiming for a higher degree of privacy, such as using your own backend over Tor, often come with tradeoffs in terms of convenience and portability. In the current implementation, those capabilities are supported in environments where the necessary controls and stability can be reliably provided, which today is the desktop app.

On the broader point: Trezor’s software is open source, and development is prioritized based on a combination of security considerations, technical feasibility, and overall user demand. Advanced configurations like the one you’re describing fall into a more specialized category, and may not always be available across all platforms at the same time.

If this capability is critical to your setup, there are currently two realistic paths:

  • Use the desktop environment, where this configuration is supported today.

  • Contribute to the Trezor Suite project by forking our code and implementing the feature for yourself.

I appreciate that the second option isn’t for everyone, but that is the model Trezor, and indeed any open source project operates under for extending functionality beyond the current roadmap.

Your feedback is still valuable and requests like this do help inform future prioritization. But for now, there isn’t a supported way to achieve this specific setup on Android with the Trezor Suite mobile app.