en	[[!meta title="Managing the circuits of Tor"]]

en	Onion Circuits displays information about the current Tor circuits and connections.

en	To open **Onion Circuits**, click on the Tor status icon ([[!img lib/symbolic/tor-disconnected.png alt="Tor status menu" link="no" class="symbolic"]] or [[!img lib/symbolic/tor-connected.png alt="Tor status menu" link="no" class="symbolic"]]) in the top-right corner and choose **Open Onion Circuits**.

en	Understanding Tor circuits

en	If Tails is already [[connected to the Tor network|doc/anonymous_internet/tor]], a list of Tor circuits appears in the left pane of *Onion Circuits*.

en	When you connect to a destination server, for example, when visiting a website, the connection appears in the list below the circuit it uses.

en	Click on a circuit to display the technical details about each relay in the right pane.

en	[[!img onion-circuits.png link=no]]

en	Each Tor circuit is made of 3 Tor relays. In the example above, the connection to **tails.net** goes through the 3 relays **drk**, **kicka**, and **Quetzalcoatl**.

en	The first relay, here **drk**, is called the *entry guard*.

en	If you configured a Tor bridge, your bridge is your entry guard.

en	The second relay, here **kicka**, is called the *middle relay*.

en	The third relay, here **Quetzalcoatl**, is called the *exit node*.

en	[[!img doc/anonymous_internet/tor/tor.png link="no" alt="Schematics of a connection to Tor with the client, the 3 relays, and the destination server."]]

en	Closing and replacing a Tor circuit

en	You can close a given Tor circuit to help replace a particularly slow Tor circuit or troubleshoot issues on the Tor network. To do so:

en	Right-click (on Mac, click with two fingers) on the circuit that you want to close.

en	Choose **Close this circuit** in the shortcut menu.

en	When you close a circuit that is being used by an application, your application gets disconnected from this destination service.

en	For example, when you close a circuit while Tor Browser is downloading a file, the download fails.

en	If you connect to the same destination server again, Tor uses a different circuit to replace the circuit that you closed.

en	For example, if you download the same file again, Tor uses a new circuit.