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This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

New features

We added a new feature of the Persistent Storage to save the settings from the Welcome Screen: language, keyboard, and additional settings.

To restore your settings when starting Tails, unlock your Persistent Storage in the Welcome Screen.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 10.0.
Update Thunderbird to 68.12.
Update Linux to 5.7.17. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.).
Configure KeePassXC to use the new default location Passwords.kdbx. (#17286)
Update python3-trezor to 0.11.6 to add compatibility with the new Trezor Model T.

Fixed problems

Disable the feature to Turn on Wi-Fi Hotspot in the Wi-Fi settings because it doesn't work in Tails. (#17887)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.11

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.2 or later to 4.11.
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 4.11 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.12 is scheduled for October 20.

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

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

Posted 2020-09-22 Tags: announce

Releases

Tails 4.10 was released on August 25.
Tails 4.11 is scheduled for September 22.

The following changes were introduced in Tails 4.10:

Update Linux to 5.7.10. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.).
Hide the welcome message when starting Thunderbird.
Fix support for USB Wi-Fi adapters with Atheros AR9271 hardware. (#17834)
Fix USB tethering from iPhone. (#17820)

Code

Added support for older TREZOR firmware (!142).
Started working on the upgrade to Thunderbird 78 ESR, and in particular its new OpenPGP support (#17148).
Automated generation of our Changelog (#17886).
Automated generation of the security advisory boilerplate from a template that technical writers can improve (!128).
Hidden broken "Turn on Wi-Fi Hotspot" feature in GNOME Wi-Fi settings (#17887).
Fixed sorting Intel GPUs last in the "Error starting GDM" message (#17903).
Upgraded Linux to 5.7.17-1 (#17895).

Documentation and website

Changed massively our instructions on how to start Tails:
1. Documented Shift + Restart on Windows. (#16456)
  
  We're not telling Windows users to use the Boot Menu key anymore.
  
  It's still the default for Linux.
2. Wrote dedicated pages for starting Tails on PC and Mac.
3. Simplified troubleshooting sections.
  
  We simplified and made consistent the troubleshooting instructions in all installation scenarios.
4. Removed instructions to report to Help Desk from the installation scenarios but kept them on doc/first steps/start.
We believe that all these changes will lower your workload and make more people start Tails at the same time.
Rephrased our FAQ about VPN. (#15783)
Wrote an FAQ about 32-bit computers. (#17866)
Fixed all outdated links to torproject.org. (#17717)
Used ikiwiki's automatic referencing of HTML ids in table of content on the pages that have the longest tables of content. (#17844)

Now you can copy links directly from the table of content to point to:

https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/#javascript

User experience

Analyzed the responses of the OpenPGP and Pidgin survey. (#17821)

It's pretty exciting because we barely have quantitative data about our user base at large.

Highlights:
- Our users find Tails relatively easy to use compared to an industry average.
- Linux users are still the biggest share of the respondents and this hasn't changed much since 2017.
- The top 5 wishes of our users are, in rough order:
  1. Do nothing because Tails is great already :)
  2. More persistent settings: security level in Tor Browser, background, keyboard, and language
  3. Messaging applications and voice calls
  4. Make Tor less painful for web browsing
  5. Better upgrades
- OpenPGP is much more popular outside Thunderbird: 49% vs. 16%.
- Enigmail users are more technical than OpenPGP users overall.
- Electrum (28%) is more used than Thunderbird (27%), which is more used than XMPP (17%).
- IRC is used by a non-negligible 8% of respondents.

Hot topics on our help desk

This last month we felt that the social crisis created by covid is starting to take a toll on our users mental state, and we received more derailed emails than usual. Hopefully there are local resources you can count on for this difficult times. Take care!

Many users wrote to us with problems related to MacbookPros from 2020.

Apple in general does not prioritize collaborating with Free Software projects, and their newest hardware is usually very hard for Free Software developers to get working with Linux, and thus Tails. In comparison, hardware for PC tends to be more open and get support for Linux faster. Please take that into consideration if you are buying hardware to run Tails.
The last release also saw some users with graphics cards issues. Please read the page shown on the error message before mailing us, because there might be a solution for your graphics card.
Some users had problems to do automatic upgrades to Tails 4.10. Update: this was fixed.

Infrastructure

Set up infrastructure that will allow Release Managers to upload to git-annex faster (tails/sysadmin/-/issues/17687).
Started coordination for requiring Buster or newer for running our test suite (#17842).
Started upgrading our Jenkins "isotester" workers to Buster.
Summed up the findings from "Gather usability data about our current CI" (#16959).

Funding

Grants

Our grant to Reset from May 1 was rejected.
We applied to RIPE NCC to work on usability improvements for censorship circumvention.

Donations

We surveyed "lapsed donors" who haven't donated since 2019 and analyzed 121 responses. Conclusions:
- We're doing good! Negative comments were few exceptions in a mass of love: the work that we do is very important and we do it well.
- We should communicate a bit more and better with past donors:
  - The main reason for lapsed donors not to renew their donation is lack of awareness.
  - We should write a newsletter to donors half-way through the year or when we have major improvements.
  - Adding an opt-in mechanism for our newsletter would allow us to be less shy to write them.
  - LimeSurvey is more convenient to send mass emails to donors.
  - We should communicate more about the impact of donations and how we spend the money.
- About our donors and their interests:
  - Donors are mostly users (74%) but they are really into helping others (70%).
  - Donors mostly talk about:
    - Privacy (24)
    - Protection from oppressive governments and persecution (18)
    - Liberty and freedom of speech (16)
We merged a first batch of improvements to our Donate page:
- To better explain our mission:
  - We wrote new slogans.
  - We improved the text on the left.
- To better explain how we spend our money:
  - We simplified the chart and added short text to explain each of maintenance, improvements, user experience, and administration.
  - We added a section about our impact with numbers of daily users.
- To increase trust:
  - We duplicated the recommendations from the Home page.
  - We improved the color scheme of the charts.

Partners

We added Freiheitsfoo as partner.

On-going discussions

Exporting secret PGP key in SeaHorse: Link to the thread.
GitLab MR terminology update: WIP→ Draft : Link to the thread.
Reviewers: Link to the thread.

Translations

All the website

de: 29% (1921) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy
es: 49% (3241) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
fa: 21% (1401) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
fr: 80% (5231) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
it: 27% (1805) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
pt: 19% (1289) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website

de: 47% (992) strings translated, 23% strings fuzzy
es: 83% (1744) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
fa: 20% (422) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy
fr: 79% (1651) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy
it: 48% (1010) strings translated, 21% strings fuzzy
pt: 38% (803) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website for languages not activated on the website yet

ar: 8% (172) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
ca: 8% (185) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
id: 8% (189) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
pl: 9% (214) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
ru: 10% (230) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
sr_Latn: 7% (164) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy
tr: 9% (216) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
zh: 12% (272) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
zh_TW: 23% (505) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 939 540 times this month. This makes 30 308 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2020-09-12

Tails 4.11, scheduled for September 22, will be the first version of Tails to include Tor Browser 10.0 and to support persistent settings on the Welcome Screen!

You can help Tails by testing the release candidate for Tails 4.11 now.

Persistent settings on the Welcome Screen

If you enable this persistence feature your Welcome Screen settings, like language selection and any administration password, will be automatically saved between sessions. While at the Welcome Screen the settings are restored as soon as you unlock your persistent encrypted volume. Please let us know if there are any problems!

Tor Browser 10.0 (alpha 6)

This new major release of Tor Browser is based on a brand new Firefox ESR series, version 78, which contains tons of changes, most under the hood. There's a risk that some of these changes break some expected feature in Tails, so please pay close attention and report any such issues to us!

Changelog

For more details about what has changed in Tails 4.11~rc1, read our changelog.

Known issues

In Tor Browser, opening file:// URLs has a problem: opening any such local file will result in an infinite refresh loop like if you kept the F5 key pressed, so it will likely not display anything. At the moment this makes it impossible to read the offline documentation inside Tails, for instance. This will be fixed in Tails 4.11.

See the list of long-standing issues.

How to test Tails 4.11~rc1?

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).

Get Tails 4.11~rc1

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from 4.2 or later to 4.11~rc1.

To do an automatic upgrade to Tails 4.11~rc1:
1. Start Tails 4.2 or later and set an administration password.
2. Run this command in a Terminal:
```
echo TAILS_CHANNEL=\"alpha\" | sudo tee -a /etc/os-release && \
     tails-upgrade-frontend-wrapper
```
  Enter the administration password when asked for the "password for amnesia".
3. After the upgrade is applied, restart Tails and choose Applications ▸ Tails ▸ About Tails to verify that you are running Tails 4.11~rc1.
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 download 4.11~rc1

Direct download

For USB sticks (USB image) (?OpenPGP signature)
For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image) (?OpenPGP signature)

BitTorrent download

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

All the data on this USB stick will be lost.

What's coming up?

Tails 4.11 is scheduled for September 22.

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

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

Posted 2020-09-06 Tags: announce

This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 9.5.4.
Update Tor to 0.4.3.6.
Update Electrum from 3.3.8 to 4.0.2.
Update Linux to 5.7.10. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.).
Hide the welcome message when starting Thunderbird.

Fixed problems

Fix support for USB Wi-Fi adapters with Atheros AR9271 hardware. (#17834)
Fix USB tethering from iPhone. (#17820)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.10

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.2 or later to 4.10.
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 4.10 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.11 is scheduled for September 22.

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

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

Posted 2020-08-25 Tags: announce

Releases

Tails 4.9 was released on June 28.
Tails 4.10 is scheduled for August 25.

Code

Prepared upgrade to tor 0.4.3.6 (#17835)
Researched how to cope with the fact Electrum is not installable on Buster anymore (#17828)
Improved robustness of our automated test suite
Documented some internal processes (#17571, #17772)

Documentation and website

We documented how to use USB tethering when Wi-Fi doesn't work in Tails. (#16987)
We improved our FAQ on VPN. (#9145)

User experience

Launched a user survey about ease of use, online privacy tools, OpenPGP, and Pidgin. (#17821)

We got more than 600 responses so far. Thanks a lot to everybody who participated!

Hot topics on our help desk

We started the month with Tails 4.8 and many users wrote to us because of problems with the Tails Welcome Screen:

They had issues with administration passwords that had special characters.
They could not access their persistent storage because changing the language on the Welcome Screen didn't change the keyboard layout as usual, although it claimed to do it.

These two issues were very upsetting for the users, although had easy workarounds. They are fixed in Tails 4.9 (Apologies!), but in the same time the kernel upgrade brought new issues (Re: Apologies!):

A lot of people reported the starting Tails was impossible since the upgrade to Tails 4.9 with their Intel Corporation [8086:22b0] GPU.
Some people reported that their Wi-Fi adapter was not working anymore.

Infrastructure

Put our translation platform. back in sync' with Git
Updated our Jenkins and its plugins (tails/sysadmin/-/issues/16955)
Improved our monitoring of download mirrors
Ported detection of stalled issues/MRs to GitLab (!110)

Funding

Our proposal to OTF on anti-censorship was paused due to their budget problems.
Our joint proposal with Tor to DRL was declined but invited to submit again next year.
We applied to the Mecenat Code Lutins to work on usability improvements.
We added Wordable and Exam Success as partners.
We coded some A/B testing to measure the impact of a design change on our one-time and monthly donations buttons. (52a2d90a42)
We made plans to improve our donation process.
We published our income statement for 2019.

Outreach

Past events

Mexico City hackerspace Rancho Electrónico did a series of three virtual Tails workshops on July 14 - 21 and August 4 as part of their AutoDefensa Digital sessions.

Translations

All the website

fr: 82% (5350) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
es: 46% (3030) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
de: 30% (1966) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
it: 27% (1795) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
fa: 22% (1468) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
pt: 21% (1401) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website

fr: 80% (1678) strings translated, 11% strings fuzzy
es: 75% (1565) strings translated, 11% strings fuzzy
it: 49% (1031) strings translated, 21% strings fuzzy
de: 49% (1025) strings translated, 22% strings fuzzy
pt: 39% (812) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy
fa: 19% (414) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website for languages not activated on the website yet

zh_TW: 25% (447) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy
zh: 12% (224) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
ru: 8% (160) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy
pl: 8% (149) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
tr: 8% (148) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
ar: 7% (132) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy
ca: 7% (131) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy
id: 5% (99) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy
sr_Latn: 4% (80) strings translated, 2% strings fuzzy

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 951 736 times this month. This makes 30 701 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2020-08-10

This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 9.5.3.
Update Thunderbird to 68.10.0.
Update Linux to 5.7.6. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.).

Fixed problems

Allow characters others than A–Z, a–z, 1–9, and _@%+=:,./- in the administration password. (#17792)
Apply the keyboard layout that is automatically selected when you change the language in the Welcome Screen. (#17794)
Fix starting Tails with the toram boot option. (#17800)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

USB Wi-Fi adapters with Atheros AR9271 hardware do not work with Linux 5.7.6. (#17834)

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.9

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.2 or later to 4.9.
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 4.9 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.10 is scheduled for August 25.

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

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

Posted 2020-07-28 Tags: announce

Releases

Tails 4.7 was released on June 2:

Make the installation of Additional Software more robust. (#17278)
Clarify the error message when entering an incorrect password to unlock a VeraCrypt volume: Wrong passphrase or parameters instead of Error unlocking volume. (#17668)
Clean up confusing comments in /etc/tor/torrc. (#17706)

Tails 4.8 was released on June 30:

We disabled the Unsafe Browser by default and clarified that the Unsafe Browser can be used to deanonymize you.
We added a new feature of the Persistent Storage to save the settings from the Welcome Screen.

This feature is beta and only the additional setting to enable the Unsafe Browser is made persistent. The other settings (language, keyboard, and other additional settings) will be made persistent in Tails 4.9 (July 28).
Fix the Find in page feature of Thunderbird. (#17328)
Fix shutting down automatically the laptop when resuming from suspend with the Tails USB stick removed. (#16787)
Notify always when MAC address spoofing fails and the network interface is disabled. (#17779)
Fix the import of OpenPGP public keys in binary format (non armored) from the Files browser.

Tails 4.9 is scheduled for July 28.

Code

Adapted our test suite to our new homepage and to GitLab. (#17718, #17719)
Upgraded to tor 0.4.3. (#17741)
Automated post-release GitLab updates with gitlab-triage. (#17589, !36)

Documentation and website

@syster added a favicon to our website. (!37)
Documented the letterboxing feature of Tor Browser. (#17227)
Interviewed 4 more candidates to the Technical Writer job offer.
Added a shortcut on top of the cloning instructions for people who are already in Tails.
Reported a bug upstream to Etcher about Windows manipulating the system partition, leading to a failed verification. (#17634)

Hot topics on our help desk

A lot of people complained about having trouble starting Tails with [AMD/ATI] Renoir GPUs, but it seems that a kernel update fixed that problem in Tails 4.8.
Some MacBook users reported that Tails fails to boot with some recent MacBooks. A workaround was proposed but people were then affected by their key combinations or mouse and keyboard not being supported by GRUB.
There were still a couple of users reporting having problems to import public PGP keys in Seahorse.

Infrastructure

Decommissioned the system that used to host our Redmine.
Made it possible for core community members to propose changes to our GitLab configuration with a merge request. (#17753)

Funding

Submitted a full proposal to the OTF Core Infrastructure Fund to improve the user experience of connecting to Tor and using Tails to circumvent censorship.

Outreach

Published leaflets and their source on the website:

?page-1.png ?page-2.png

Past events

El Barracon Digital from El Progreso, Honduras, organized an international online webinar on Tails: Privacidad y Anonimato Con Tails.

Upcoming events

El Rancho Electronico is organizing 2 online workshops about Tails on July 14 and July 21.

Press and testimonials

2020-06-23: Privacy-Focused OS Wants to Know How Facebook and the FBI Hacked it by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai in Motherboard.
2020-06-10: Facebook Helped the FBI Hack a Child Predator by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai in Motherboard.

Translations

All the website

fr: 84% (5415) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
es: 47% (3072) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
de: 30% (1988) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
it: 28% (1808) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
fa: 22% (1474) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
pt: 22% (1418) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website

fr: 83% (1709) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
es: 77% (1585) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
it: 50% (1043) strings translated, 20% strings fuzzy
de: 50% (1041) strings translated, 21% strings fuzzy
pt: 39% (815) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy
fa: 20% (415) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website for languages not activated on the website yet

zh_TW: 25% (447) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy
zh: 12% (224) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
ru: 8% (160) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy
pl: 8% (149) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
tr: 8% (148) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
ar: 7% (132) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy
ca: 7% (131) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy
id: 5% (99) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy
sr_Latn: 4% (80) strings translated, 2% strings fuzzy

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 926 605 times this month. This makes 30 887 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2020-07-13

This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

New features

We disabled the Unsafe Browser by default and clarified that the Unsafe Browser can be used to deanonymize you.

An attacker could exploit a security vulnerability in another application in Tails to start an invisible Unsafe Browser and reveal your IP address, even if you are not using the Unsafe Browser.

For example, an attacker could exploit a security vulnerability in Thunderbird by sending you a phishing email that could start an invisible Unsafe Browser and reveal them your IP address.

Such an attack is very unlikely but could be performed by a strong attacker, such as a government or a hacking firm.

This is why we recommend that you:
- Only enable the Unsafe Browser if you need to log in to a captive portal.
- Always upgrade to the latest version of Tails to fix known vulnerabilities as soon as possible.
We added a new feature of the Persistent Storage to save the settings from the Welcome Screen.

This feature is beta and only the additional setting to enable the Unsafe Browser is made persistent. The other settings (language, keyboard, and other additional settings) will be made persistent in Tails 4.9 (July 28).

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 9.5.1.
Update Thunderbird to 68.9.0.
Update Linux to 5.6.0. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, etc.).

Fixed problems

Fix the Find in page feature of Thunderbird. (#17328)
Fix shutting down automatically the laptop when resuming from suspend with the Tails USB stick removed. (#16787)
Notify always when MAC address spoofing fails and the network interface is disabled. (#17779)
Fix the import of OpenPGP public keys in binary format (non armored) from the Files browser.

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

Only use the following characters in the administration password:
- a–z
- A–Z
- 1–9
- _@%+=:,./-
If you use spaces or other accentuated characters, like àéïøů, your will not be able to type your administration password again in your Tails session, unless you type single quotes ' around it.

For example, if you set the administration password: née entrepôt über señor, you would have to type 'née entrepôt über señor'. (#17792)
The keyboard layout is not applied to the Welcome Screen when automatically selected after you changed the language. (#17794)

For example, setting the language to French seems to change the keyboard layout to French (AZERTY) but this change is not applied to the Welcome Screen. This can prevent you from typing the passphrase of your Persistent Storage.

To change the keyboard layout of the Welcome Screen, select your keyboard layout manually from the Keyboard Layout drop-down menu. Do so even if they keyboard layout is automatically selected after you changed the language.
Tails fails to start with the toram boot option. (#17800)

To start with the toram boot option, specify both the toram and the fromiso=/dev/true boot options.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.8

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.2 or later to 4.8.
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:

All the data on this 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 4.8 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.9 is scheduled for July 28.

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

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

Posted 2020-06-30 Tags: announce

We stand in solidarity with Black people around the world. No justice, no peace. Please be safe while protesting and also when communicating online.

Releases

The following changes were introduced in Tails:

Update Tor Browser to 9.0.10.
Add support for Universal 2nd Factor USB security keys.
Configure persistent volume, Tails documentation, WhisperBack Error Reporting, and Tails Installer are now in the submenu of Favorites applications.
Change the input method for Japanese from Anthy to Mozc.

Code

Onboarded a new maintainer for our Debian packages. Welcome nodens!
Fixed a bug that often broke the Additional Software feature.

Documentation and website

Published a job offer for a technical writer. This is a paid offer for self-employed freelancers.
Released new Home and About pages. Drawings are by Andrés Fernández Cordón.

Documented how to include screenshots when reporting an error.
Documented how to import OpenPGP keys from the Files browser. (#17183)

User experience

Discussed the UX implications of dropping our time sync hacks.
Discussed possible strategies around the degrading state of the Passwords and Keys utility.

Hot topics on our help desk

We saw more problems for Mac computers this month, some users could not use their keyboard and touchpad, and others could not start Tails. If you plan to use a laptop for Tails, try to test it before buying it.
Many Electrum users had to restore their wallet as explained in our documentation.
Some ATI Radeon cards have problems to start Tails 4.7.

Infrastructure

Completed our migration to GitLab.
Onboarded kibi and emmapeel in the team maintaining our pool of mirrors.

Funding

Received an invitation to submit a full proposal to the OTF Core Infrastructure Fund to improve the user experience of connecting to Tor and using Tails to circumvent censorship.
Improved how corporate donation matching programs and Benevity are explained on our Donate page. (#17698)

Outreach

We are discussing a proposal to make Tails' presence in the Fediverse official.

On-going discussions

We are sharing feedback and tips about using GitLab.

Translations

All the website

de: 30% (1988) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
es: 47% (3072) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
fa: 22% (1474) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy
fr: 84% (5415) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
it: 28% (1808) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
pt: 22% (1418) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website

de: 50% (1041) strings translated, 21% strings fuzzy
es: 77% (1585) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
fa: 20% (415) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy
fr: 83% (1709) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy
it: 50% (1043) strings translated, 20% strings fuzzy
pt: 39% (815) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 981 624 times this month. This makes 31 665 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2020-06-11

This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

Changes and updates

Update Tor Browser to 9.5.
Update Thunderbird to 68.8.0.

Fixed problems

Make the installation of Additional Software more robust. (#17278)
Clarify the error message when entering an incorrect password to unlock a VeraCrypt volume: Wrong passphrase or parameters instead of Error unlocking volume. (#17668)
Clean up confusing comments in /etc/tor/torrc. (#17706)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.7

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.2 or later to 4.7.
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:

All the data on this USB stick will be lost.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 4.7 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.8 is scheduled for June 30.

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

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

Posted 2020-06-02 Tags: announce

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