If your Wi-Fi interface is not working, for example:

  • There is no Wi-Fi option in the system menu:

  • You receive the notification Connection failed: Activation of network connection failed.

  • The interface is disabled when starting Tails or when plugging in your USB Wi-Fi adapter:

    Notification about network card being disabled

    In this case, you can disable MAC address anonymization to get your Wi-Fi interface to work in Tails. Disabling MAC address anonymization has security implications, so read carefully our documentation about MAC address anonymization before doing so.

To connect to the Internet, you can try to:

  • Use an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi if possible. Wired interfaces work much more reliably than Wi-Fi in Tails.

  • Share the Wi-Fi or mobile data connection of your phone using a USB cable. Sharing a connection this way is called USB tethering.

    See instructions for:

    Tails cannot hide the information that identifies your phone on the local network. If you connect your phone to:

    • A Wi-Fi network, then the network will know the MAC address of your phone. This has security implications that are discussed in our documentation on MAC address anonymization. Some phones have a feature to hide the real MAC address of the phone.

    • A mobile data network, then the network will be able to know the identifier of your SIM card (IMSI) and also the serial number of your phone (IMEI).

  • Buy a USB Wi-Fi adapter that works in Tails:

    VendorModelSizeSpeedPriceBuy offlineBuy online
    Panda WirelessUltraNano150 Mbit/s$18NoAmazon
    Panda WirelessPAU05Small300 Mbit/s$65NoAmazon
    ThinkPenguinTPE-N150USBNano150 Mbit/s$74NoThinkPenguin

    If you find another USB Wi-Fi adapter that works in Tails, please let us know. You can write to tails-support-private@boum.org (private email).

  • Check in our list of known Wi-Fi issues if there is a workaround to get your Wi-Fi interface to work in Tails.