Opening your Persistent Storage from another operating system can compromise your security. For example, the other operating system might create thumbnails of images or automatically index the content of the files in the Persistent Storage.

There are currently no easy tools to open a Persistent Storage from Windows or macOS anyway, so there is no risk of doing so by mistake.

If you plug your Tails USB stick into another Linux, you will probably be asked to enter the passphrase of your Persistent Storage automatically, for example in Debian or Ubuntu. Linux distributions generally include utilities to open and create LUKS encrypted volumes, like the Persistent Storage, by default.

To exchange files between your Persistent Storage and another operating system, store these files instead on a separate USB stick or external hard disk. You can:

• Create an encrypted volume using VeraCrypt to store multiple files in a kind of encrypted folder or partition. VeraCrypt works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

• Create an encrypted partition using LUKS to use an encrypted USB stick between Tails and another Linux system.

• Encrypt files using Kleopatra. Kleopatra works on Windows and Linux, but not macOS.