overview

You need

1 USB stick

Only for Tails!

8 GB minimum

Your primary Tails

1 USB stick

All data will be lost!

8 GB minimum

Why?

It is currently impossible to manually upgrade a Tails USB stick while running from itself. This scenario requires creating an intermediary Tails on another USB stick, from which to upgrade your Tails.

Windows 7

or later

macOS 10.10

Yosemite
or later

Linux

any distribution

Debian

Ubuntu

or another derivative

Another Tails

USB stick or DVD

2 GB of RAM

64-bit

Intel processor

not Apple processor

2 GB of RAM

64-bit

Smartphone

or printer
to follow the instructions

1 hour in total

½ hour

¼ hour

1.5 GB to download

½ hour to install

½ hour to upgrade

To learn about the processor in your Mac, choose Apple menu ▸ About This Mac and check the Processor or Chip information.

If your Mac has an Apple chip, Tails won't work.

Making Tails work on Apple chips represents a massive engineering challenge.

The Asahi Linux project is working on support for Apple chips in Linux. Support for Apple chips in Debian is following along, but it is not complete yet.

You can track our own experiments on #10972.

Detailed system requirements and recommended hardware.

Summary ======= - Tails works on: * Most PC computers that are less than 10 years old * Some older Mac computers with an Intel processor - Tails does not work: * Newer Mac computers with an Apple processor (M1 or M2) * Smartphones or tablets * Raspberry Pi - Tails might not work on: * Some older computers, for example, if they don't have 2 GB of RAM. * Some newer computers, for example, if their graphics card is incompatible with Linux. Nvidia or AMD Radeon cards often do not work in Tails.

See our list of known hardware compatibility issues.

Detailed hardware requirements ============================== - A USB stick of 8 GB minimum or a recordable DVD. All the data on this USB stick or DVD is lost when installing Tails. - The ability to start from a USB stick or a DVD reader. - A 64-bit x86-64 IBM PC compatible processor. * Tails does not works on ARM or PowerPC processors. * Tails does not work on 32-bit computers since Tails 3.0 (June 2017). - 2 GB of RAM to work smoothly. Tails can work with less than 2 GB RAM but might behave strangely or crash. Recommended hardware ==================== Laptop models evolve too rapidly for us to be able to provide an up-to-date list of recommended hardware. Below are some guidelines if you, or your organization, are considering acquiring a laptop dedicated to running Tails. ### For PC - Avoid "gaming" models with Nvidia or AMD Radeon graphics cards. - Consider buying a refurbished laptop from a high-end (professional) series. These are cheaper and will last longer than new but lower-quality laptops. * For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad series work well with Tails, including the X250, X1 Carbon, T440, T480, and T490 models. * If you live in a part of the world where buying refurbished laptops is uncommon, look on eBay and Amazon. Amazon offers a 90-day [Amazon Renewed Guarantee](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G4ZAA22U35N373NX). - Consider buying a new laptop from vendors who guarantee the compatibility with Linux and Tails like [ThinkPenguin](https://www.thinkpenguin.com/). ### For Mac Unfortunately, we don't know of any Mac model that works well in Tails and can run the latest macOS version.