Between 2021 and 2023 Tails, Tor, and the Guardian Project partnered to organize training and usability tests in Ecuador, Mexico, and Brazil. Our goals were to:

Promote our digital security tools and train human rights defenders in the Global South.
Learn from their experiences and needs to help us prioritize future work.
Improve the usability of our tools based on their feedback.

Usability tests and improvements

We conducted 4 rounds of in-person moderated usability tests in Mexico, Brazil, and Ecuador to identify usability issues in the features of Tails that are most important to new users:

Installation - Tor Connection - Persistent Storage

The DesignOps tools that we used to organize these usability tests are all publicly available on our website.

The detailed methodology for each of the usability tests is explained in the corresponding GitLab issues, linked below.

Installation

In December 2021 in Mexico, we learned that the tools for new users to install Tails worked well, but several people got lost while navigating the instructions on the website.

Based on these findings, we restructured our installation pages and fixed 30 usability issues on the website.

We tested these improvements in August 2022 in Brazil and confirmed that the new installation pages were much easier to follow. Only 1 out of 4 participants had trouble installing Tails on their own. All participants could start Tails and connect to the Tor network easily.

Details:

Usability tests of first-time use in Mexico (#18074)
- Summary of findings
- Detailed findings
Usability tests of first-time use in Brazil (#18784)
- Summary of findings
- Detailed findings

Tor Connection

In July 2021, we released the Tor Connection assistant to completely redesign how to connect Tails to the Tor network. The new assistant is most useful to people who are at high risk of physical surveillance, under heavy network censorship, or on a poor Internet connection.

In August 2022 in Brazil, we tested the usability of Tor Connection when accessing the Tor network is blocked by censorship or by a captive portal.

Despite the many usability issues that we fixed since the first release of Tor Connection, 3 test participants out of 4 failed to connect when access to the Tor network was blocked.

Since then we fixed 14 usability issues affecting Tor Connection: to understand better why connecting to Tor fails, to make it easier to configure a Tor bridge, and to make it easier to sign in to a network using a captive portal.

Usability tests of Tor Connection (#18762)
- Summary of findings
- Detailed findings

Persistent Storage

In March 2023 in Ecuador, we tested the usability of the new Persistent Storage, which was released in Tails in December 2022.

We didn't find any serious usability issues in the new Persistent Storage. The fact that people don't have to restart to create and enable the Persistent Storage and that their data (eg. Wi-Fi password) is stored on creation were huge improvements compared to the old Persistent Storage.

March 2023: Usability tests of the new Persistent Storage (#18648)
- Summary of findings
- Detailed findings

Trainings

Through our combined efforts we reached 47 organizations and trained 433 human rights defenders on our family of tools based on the Tor network. For Tails only, we conducted 8 workshops and trained 84 people on using Tails: journalists, activists, feminists, lawyers, and human rights defenders.

The material used for these Tails workshops is available on our website in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Assistants to the workshops were able to start Tails on all their PC computers but had more frequent issues with Mac computers.

From what is already possible to do with Tails, people were most interested in using Tails to:

Handle sensitive data, for example, medical data of abortion patients, sensitive documents from political trials, or field studies from human rights violations. That said, not all journalists thought that they were manipulating data that was sensitive enough to require a tool like Tails. Sometimes it was hard to draw the line on when to use Tails and when not.
Investigate sensitive topics online, either for journalistic purposes, medical purposes, or when making safe travel plans.
Have a secure OS when using other people's computer, either when traveling or when people don't have the means to have their own computer.

From what is not possible yet to do with Tails, people were most interested in:

Doing online meetings and using mobile messaging apps like Signal and Telegram from Tails.
Using a VPN instead of Tor for speed and access to more websites.

We included both of these objectives in our 3-year product strategy. You can track our progress in the GitLab issues related to #19472.

New features

Add curl, a command line tool to download over HTTPS, FTP, and other protocols.

curl can be useful for online investigations as an alternative to wget.

Everything you do with curl goes through the Tor network. If you want to use curl on a local network, use /usr/bin/curl instead.

Changes and updates

Use LUKS2 by default for all new Persistent Storage and LUKS encrypted volumes. LUKS2 provide stronger cryptography by default.

We will provide a migration plan from LUKS1 to LUKS2 for existing Persistent Storage in Tails 5.14 (early June).
Update Tor Browser to 12.0.6.

Fixed problems

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 5.13

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 5.0 or later to 5.13.

You can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 5.13 directly:

Highlights

Radically Open Security audited the security of the new Persistent Storage, our migration to Wayland, and the Unsafe Browser.

We already started releasing fixes to the issues that they identified. We will publish more about this audit and our mitigation plans in the coming months.
We analyzed the usability tests of the Persistent Storage done in March in Ecuador.
We applied to the Spyware Accountability Initiative to improve Tails for the journalists who use Tails to investigate and report on spyware or protect themselves from spyware in sensitive data.
Our entire team gathered in Paris, France to discuss internal matters, financial and product strategy.

Releases

Tails 5.12 was released on April 19.

It fixes many usability and reliability issues in the new Persistent Storage:

After you turn off a feature of the Persistent Storage, you can now click the Delete Data button to delete the data stored for this feature.
When creating the Persistent Storage, a random and very secure passphrase is now displayed as a suggestion, using the diceware technique.
Use a new icon for the backup utility for the Persistent Storage.
Improve the error message when a feature of the Persistent Storage fails to activate from the Welcome Screen to clarify which feature is affected.
Make the activation of the Persistent Storage more reliable in 2 error cases. (#19376 and #19331)
Add a progress indicator while turning on a new feature to clarify that it can take some time. (#19291)
Make sure that all data that is already available in Tails is really copied to the USB stick when turning on a feature. (#19368)

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 724 299 times this month. This makes 24 143 boots a day on average.

New features

Data deletion when deactivating a feature of the Persistent Storage

After you turn off a feature of the Persistent Storage, you can now click the Delete Data button to delete the data stored for this feature.

Persistent Storage settings with message:
Persistent Folder. The data of this feature is still saved. Delete Data?

Passphrase suggestion when creating the Persistent Storage

When creating the Persistent Storage, a random and very secure passphrase is now displayed as a suggestion:

We recommend a long passphrase of 5 to 7 random words. For example: Ella Grim Inca Brief Facts Panda

This passphrase uses the diceware method to give very strong security guarantees while being possible to memorize.

For example, a six-word passphrase like we suggest would take 3 505 years to crack at a trillion guesses a second.

Learn more about the maths in The Intercept: Passphrases That You Can Memorize — But That Even the NSA Can’t Guess.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 12.0.5.
Update the Linux kernel to 6.1.20. This improves the support for newer hardware: graphics, Wi-Fi, and so on.
Use a new icon for the backup utility for the Persistent Storage.

Fixed problems

We fixed several reliability issues with the Persistent Storage:

We improved the error message when a feature of the Persistent Storage fails to activate from the Welcome Screen to clarify which feature is affected.

After starting Tails, the feature that failed to activate is marked as such in the Persistent Storage settings. You can try turning the feature off and on again or deleting its data to reset it entirely.
We made the activation of the Persistent Storage more reliable in 2 error cases. (#19376 and #19331)
We added a progress indicator while turning on a new feature to clarify that it can take some time. (#19291)
We made sure that all data that is already available in Tails is really copied to the USB stick when turning on a feature. (#19368)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 5.12

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 5.0 or later to 5.12.

You can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 5.12 directly:

Highlights

We got in touch with the journalists that reported how feminists in Mexico were spied by the army: https://nocallaronlasolas.serendipia.digital/.

We improved Persistent Storage behavior and UX in corner-cases (!1010).

We have started tests of the new Persistent Storage. As you might remember, there was a big revamp in Tails 5.8. The new implementation has been designed to have a smoother UI.

Releases

Tails 5.11 was released on March 20:

it improves performance on low-memory systems, and improves your ability to record screencasts.

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 740000 times this month. This makes 23884 boots a day on average.

New features

Tails now uses the zram Linux kernel module to extend the capacity of the computer's memory.

You can run more applications or use your session for longer periods of time. Tails will handle more load before freezing and become slow more progressively.
You can record screencasts using the integrated feature of GNOME. We configured this feature to allow unlimited screencasts. See screenshot and screencast.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 12.0.4.
Update Thunderbird to 102.9.0.
Redesigned the unlocking section of the Welcome Screen.

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 5.11

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 5.0 or later to 5.11.

You can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 5.11 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 5.12 is scheduled for April 18.

Have a look at our roadmap to see where we are heading to.

Highlights

@bokonon joined our team, as our Fundraising Lead. bokonon will help us develop and grow our fundraising initiatives, to support the work we do to accomplish our mission.
We prepared usability tests planned in Ecuador in March.

Releases

We released Tails 5.10 on February 16.

As part of our focus on polishing user experience, Tails now asks for confirmation when starting without unlocking the Persistent Storage. Because we humans sometimes forget stuff. It's OK :)

Tails 5.10 fixed a few problems introduced in Tails 5.8 in December, and some more:

Fixed another case of Persistent Storage not activating. (#19432)
Avoid opening the Persistent Storage settings each time after login. (#19410)
Solve a possible privilege escalation through a symlink attack.

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 652 918 times this month. This makes 23 318 boots a day on average.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 12.0.3.
Ask for confirmation when starting without unlocking the Persistent Storage.
Update our documentation on the Persistent Storage.

Fixed problems

Avoid crashing when the download of an upgrade is stopped and resumed. (#18435)
Solve a possible privilege escalation through a symlink attack. (#19424)

Dennis Brinkrolf discovered that an adversary who could already run arbitrary code as the amnesia user in Tails 5.9, could have escalated their privileges to reading arbitrary files on the system. It might have been possible to use this as part of an exploit chain to gain root privileges.

Persistent Storage

Avoid opening the Persistent Storage settings each time after login. (#19410)
Solve some cases of failure to activate the Persistent Storage by bumping the unlocking timeout to 120 seconds. (#19432)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 5.10

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 5.0 or later to 5.10.

You can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 5.10 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 5.11 is scheduled for March 14.

Have a look at our roadmap to see where we are heading to.

Highlights

We agreed internally on strategic goals for the new 3 years.

In terms of product strategy, we will focus on learning about existing users who match our personas and how to serve them better. We will focus less on acquiring new users from our target audience.

In terms of features, we will prioritize better interoperability with tools like mobile messaging apps, online video calls, and social media.
We updated our documentation to the new Persistent Storage and added a page about opening your Persistent Storage from another operating system.
We made Tails Upgrader use our new pool of mirrors at https://download.tails.net/ instead of our previous custom solution.

Releases

Tails 5.9 was released on January 23.

It fixed most of the regressions introduced in Tails 5.8 in December:

Fixed support for some graphics cards.
Fixed starting AppImages that use the Qt toolkit like Feather and Bitcoin-Qt. (#19326)
Fixed clipboard encryption and decryption in Kleopatra. (#19329)
Fixed at least 2 cases of Persistent Storage not activating:
- When activation takes longer (#19347)
- When the Dotfiles feature includes symbolic links (#19346)
Fixed 3 clipboard operations with KeePassXC.

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 713 228 times this month. This makes 23 007 boots a day on average.

We are sorry that Tails 5.8 affected many of you so badly.

Thanks to your patience and feedback, we were able to solve most of these new issues.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 102.7.
Update the Tor client to 0.4.7.13.
Simplify the error screen of the Tor Connection assistant when connecting automatically.
Improve the wording of the backup utility for the Persistent Storage.
Remove the confirmation dialog when starting the Unsafe Browser.

Fixed problems

Fix support for some graphics cards:
- Update the Linux kernel to 6.0.12. This improves the support for newer hardware in general: graphics, Wi-Fi, and so on. (#18467)
- Remove from the Troubleshooting Mode 2 boot options that break support for some graphics cards: nomodeset and vga=normal. (#19321)
Please let us know if the support for your graphics cards has been fixed or is still broken.
Fix starting AppImages that use the Qt toolkit like Feather and Bitcoin-Qt. (#19326)
Fix clipboard encryption and decryption in Kleopatra. (#19329)
Fix at least 2 cases of Persistent Storage not activating:
- When activation takes longer (#19347)
- When the Dotfiles feature includes symbolic links (#19346)
Please keep reporting issues with the new Persistent Storage. We give them top priority!
Fix 3 clipboard operations with KeePassXC:
- Copying a passphrase to unlock a database (#19237)
- Using the auto-type feature (#19339)
- Clearing passwords automatically from the clipboard after 10 seconds
Fix the display of the applications menu that was broken in some GTK3 applications installed as Additional Software. (#19371)
Localize the homepage of Tor Browser when started from the Tor Connection assistant. (#19369)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

Please keep reporting issues with the new Persistent Storage and when starting on graphics cards that used to work with Tails.

Tor Browser has no minimize and maximize buttons (#19328)

To work around this:

Right-click on the Tor Browser tab in the window list at the bottom of the screen.
Choose Minimize or Maximize.

Welcome Screen and Tor Connection don't fit on 800×600 (#19324)

The top of the Welcome Screen and some button of the Tor Connection assistant are cut out on small displays (800×600), like virtual machines.

You can press Alt+S to start Tails.

Progress bar of Tor Connection gets stuck around 50% (#19173)

When using a custom Tor obfs4 bridge, the progress bar of Tor Connection sometimes gets stuck halfway through and becomes extremely slow.

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.

Get Tails 5.9

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 5.0 or later to 5.9.

You can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 5.9 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 5.10 is scheduled for February 21.