We plan to release Tails 5.0 on May 3 or May 31. It will be the first version of Tails based on Debian 11 (Bullseye). It brings new versions of most of the software included in Tails and some important usability improvements.

You can help Tails by testing the beta for Tails 5.0 before the end of April.

  1. Changes and upgrades
  2. Fixed problems
  3. Changelog
  4. Known issues
  5. How to test Tails 5.0~beta1?
  6. Get Tails 5.0~beta1
  7. What's coming up?

Changes and upgrades

  • Update to Debian 11 (Bullseye)

    In particular this updates software included in Tails to:

    • GNOME 3.38
    • Audacity 2.4.2
    • GIMP 2.20.22
    • Inkscape 1.0.2
    • LibreOffice 7.0.4
    • OnionCircuits 0.7
    • Pidgin 2.14.1
    • Thunderbird 91.7.0-2~deb11u1

  • Upgrade Tor Browser to 11.0.10

  • Enable driverless printing and scanning (#18521)

Fixed problems

  • Fix locales translation in the Welcome Screen (#18199)

  • Fix opening a Veracrypt volume with a long passphrase (#17474)

Changelog

For more details about what has changed in Tails 5.0~beta1, read our changelog.

Known issues

  • WhisperBack fails to send error reports (#18908).

  • Tails Installer sometimes fails to install or upgrade Tails (#18844, #18841). If this happens to you, please retry.

  • Additional Software sometimes fails to install packages on first startup after configuring it (#18839). To fix this problem, install your Additional Software manually again, then restart Tails.

  • OpenPGP Applet is not usable: its icon is not displayed (#18845).

  • Tails 5.0~beta1 takes more time to start than previous versions (#18906).

  • Open issues for Tails 5.0

See the list of long-standing issues.

How to test Tails 5.0~beta1?

Keep in mind that this is a test image. We tested that it is not broken in obvious ways, but it might still contain undiscovered issues.

Please, report any new problem to tails-testers@boum.org (public mailing list) before the end of April.

Get Tails 5.0~beta1

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your Persistent Storage

No automatic upgrade is available, so do a manual upgrade.

To download 5.0~beta1

Direct download

  • For USB sticks (USB image)

  • For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)

BitTorrent download

  • For USB sticks (USB image)

  • For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)

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.

What's coming up?

We will keep our calendar updated regarding the planned release date of Tails 5.0.

We need your help and there are many ways to contribute to Tails (donating is only one of them). Come talk to us!