When Tails starts, Wi-Fi, WWAN, and WiMAX devices are enabled.

But all other kinds of wireless devices such as Bluetooth, GPS and FM devices are disabled by default. If you want to use such a device, you need to enable it first.

Enable a wireless device

This technique uses the command line.

1. When starting Tails, set up an administration password.

2. To find out the index of the wireless device that you want to enable, open a root terminal, and execute the following command:

   rfkill list

   For example, the command could return the following:

   0: phy0: Wireless LAN
           Soft blocked: no
           Hard blocked: no
   1: hci0: Bluetooth
           Soft blocked: yes
           Hard blocked: no
   2: gps0: GPS
           Soft blocked: yes
           Hard blocked: no
   

   The device index is the number that appears at the beginning of the three lines describing each device. In this example, the index of the Bluetooth device is 1, while the index of the GPS device is 2. Yours are probably different.

3. To enable the wireless device, execute the following command in the root terminal, replacing index with the index found at step 2:

   rfkill unblock index

   Here is an example of the command to execute. Yours is probably different:

   rfkill unblock 2

4. To verify that the wireless device is enabled, execute the following command in the root terminal again:

   rfkill list

   This output should be very similar to the one of step 2, but the device enabled at step 3 should not be soft blocked anymore.

   For example, the command could return the following:

   0: phy0: Wireless LAN
           Soft blocked: no
           Hard blocked: no
   1: hci0: Bluetooth
           Soft blocked: yes
           Hard blocked: no
   2: gps0: GPS
           Soft blocked: no
           Hard blocked: no