Tails is a live system that aims to preserve your privacy and anonymity. It helps you to use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship almost anywhere you go and on any computer but leaving no trace unless you ask it to explicitly.
It is a complete operating system designed to be used from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card independently of the computer's original operating system.
Changes
Letter boxing prevents websites from identifying your browser based on the size of its window. Letter boxing replaces the yellow warning that was displayed until now when maximizing Tor Browser.
To switch to a new identity, choose ▸ New Identity.
MAT has no graphical interface of its own anymore.
To clean the metadata of a file:
Performance and usability improvements
New documentation pages
Get Tails 4.0
To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage
Automatic upgrades are not available to 4.0.
All users must do a manual upgrade.
To install Tails on a new USB stick
Follow our installation instructions:
Changes
- Replace KeePassX with KeePassXC, which is more actively developed.
- Update OnionShare from 0.9.2 to 1.3.2, which includes a lot of usability improvements.
- Update Tor Browser to 9.0:
- A gray border, called letter boxing, is now displayed around the content of web pages when you resize the window of Tor Browser.
Letter boxing prevents websites from identifying your browser based on the size of its window. Letter boxing replaces the yellow warning that was displayed until now when maximizing Tor Browser.
- The onion icon has been removed from the top bar.
To switch to a new identity, choose ▸ New Identity.
- Update MAT from 0.6.1 to 0.8.0
MAT has no graphical interface of its own anymore.
To clean the metadata of a file:
- Open the Files browser and navigate to the file that you want to clean.
- Right-click (on Mac, click with two fingers) on the file.
- Choose Remove metadata.
- Update Linux to 5.3.2. This should also improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.).
- Update Electrum from 3.2.3 to 3.3.8. Electrum works again in Tails.
- Update Enigmail to 2.0.12 and gnupg to 2.2.12, which mitigate OpenPGP certificate flooding.
- Upgrade most other software, for example:
- Audacity from 2.1.2 to 2.2.2
- GIMP from 2.8.18 to 2.10.8
- Inkscape from 0.92.1 to 0.92.4
- LibreOffice from 5.2.7 to 6.1.5
- git from 2.11.0 to 2.20.1
- Tor to 0.4.1.6
- Remove Scribus.
Performance and usability improvements
- Tails 4.0 starts 20% faster.
- Tails 4.0 requires about 250 MB less of RAM.
- Tails 4.0 is 47 MB smaller to download than Tails 3.16, despite all these changes.
- Add support for Thunderbolt devices.
- The screen keyboard is easier to use.
- Make it possible to show the password of the persistent storage when creating one.
- Add support for USB tethering from iPhone.
New documentation pages
- How to securely erasing an entire device, including USB sticks and SSDs.
- How to backup your persistent volume.
Get Tails 4.0
To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage
Automatic upgrades are not available to 4.0.
All users must do a manual upgrade.
To install Tails on a new USB stick
Follow our installation instructions: