Download Tails 5.8

Tails stands for The amnesic incognito live system and is a live Linux distribution that focuses on privacy and anonymity. It uses Debian GNU/Linux as a base and adds a Gnome environment with Tor, Tor Browser, Pidgin, Thunderbird, Electrum, LibreOffice, GPG and KeePassXC. For more information, please refer to this page. Version 5 is based on Debian 11 and, among other things, OpenPGP has been replaced by Kleopatra. The following changes and improvements have also been made in version 5.8:

New Persistent Storage

After 2 years of hard work, we are extremely proud to present you a complete redesign of the Persistent Storage. The Persistent Storage hasn’t changed much since its first release in 2012 because the code was hard to modify and improve. But, we learned from users that the Persistent Storage could do a lot more for you if it had more features and was easier to use.

• You don’t have to restart anymore after creating the Persistent Storage or each time you activate a new feature.
• You can change the password of your Persistent Storage from this new application.
• You can choose to create a Persistent Storage directly from the Welcome Screen, if you don’t have one already.

Wayland and better Unsafe Browser

We replaced the deprecated X.Org display system with Wayland. Even if you won’t notice any visual difference, Wayland brings more security in depth to Tails by making it harder for a compromised application in Tails to compromise or misuse another application.

For example, since Tails 4.8the Unsafe Browser was disabled by default because a security vulnerability in another application in Tails could start an invisible Unsafe Browser, reveal your IP address, and deanonymize you. Wayland fixes this vulnerability and makes it safe to reenable the Unsafe Browser by default. You can still disable the Unsafe Browser in the Welcome Screen. Wayland also brings in other features that were not working yet in the Unsafe Browser:

• Sound
• Uploads and downloads
• Alternative input methods for Chinese and other non-Latin languages
• Accessibility features like the screen reader and virtual keyboard

QR code scanning or Tor bridges

We made it easier to enter new Tor bridges in Tails by scanning a QR code. To get a QR code, you can either:

• Send an empty email to [email protected] from a Gmail or Riseup email address.
• Get bridges from https://bridges.torproject.org/ and print the QR code on paper.

We are aware that the QR codes that are currently provided are too big to be easy to scan. We are working with Tor to make them smaller and easier to scan.

Changes and updates

• Update Tor Browser to 12.0.1.
• Update Thunderbird to 102.6.0.
• Update Tor to 0.4.7.12.

Fixed problems

We fixed 3 usability issues in the Tor Connection assistant:

• Display a percentage on the connection progress bar. (#19208)
• Fix links to documentation. (#19172)
• Add a Bridge label in front of the line to enter a custom bridge. (#19169)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

• The switches that turn on and off the different features of the Persistent Storage are very slow to respond on some USB sticks. Please report on #19291 if this happens to you.
• The top of the Welcome Screen is cut out on small displays (800×600), like virtual machines. (#19324) You can press Alt+S to start Tails.
• When using a custom Tor obfs4 bridge, the progress bar of Tor Connection sometimes gets stuck halfway through and becomes extremely slow. (#19173) To fix this, you can either:
  • Close and reopen Tor Connection to speed up the initial connection.
  • Try a different obfs4 bridge. This issue only affects outdated obfs4 bridges and does not happen with obfs4 bridges that run version 0.0.12 or later.

See the list of long standing issues.