We are very excited to present you a release candidate of the upcoming Tails 6.0.

We plan to release Tails 6.0 officially on February 27. You can help us by testing already a release candidate of Tails 6.0 before February 18.

Tails 6.0 will be the first version of Tails based on Debian 12 (Bookworm) and GNOME 43. It will bring new versions of most of the software included in Tails as well as several important security and usability improvements.

We will provide security upgrades for Tails 6.0~rc1 like we do for regular versions of Tails.

New features

Mount external devices automatically

When you plug in an external storage device, a USB stick or an external hard disk, Tails 6.0~rc1 mounts it automatically. If the storage device contains an encrypted partition, Tails 6.0~rc1 offers you to unlock the encryption automatically.

Protection against malicious USB devices

If an attacker manages to plug a malicious USB device in your computer, they could run software that breaks the security built in Tails without your knowledge.

To protect from such attacks while you are away from your computer, Tails 6.0~rc1 ignores any USB device that is plugged in while your screen is locked.

You can only use new USB devices if they are plugged in while the screen is unlocked.

Dark Mode and Night Light

From the system menu of Tails 6.0~rc1, you can now switch between:

• The default light mode with colder colors and more brightness

  

• A dark mode

  

• A night light mode with warmer colors and less brightness

  

• A combination of both the dark mode and night light mode

  

Easier screenshots and screencasts

GNOME 43 introduces a new shortcut in the system menu that makes it easier to take a screenshot or record a screencast.

Easier Gmail in Thunderbird

Thanks to changes in both Thunderbird and Gmail, it's much easier to configure a Gmail account in Thunderbird in Tails 6.0~rc1.

• You don't have to configure anything special in your Gmail account, other than the usual 2-Step Verification.

• You can sign in to your Gmail account directly when configuring it in Thunderbird.

Diceware passphrases in 5 more languages

When creating a Persistent Storage, suggested passphrases are now also generated in Catalan, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Thanks to jawlensky who created the word lists for Catalan, Italian, and Spanish for Tails, but also made them available to all users of diceware.

Changes and updates

Included software

Tails 6.0~rc1 updates many of the applications included in Tails, among others:

• Electrum from 4.0.9 to 4.3.4

  • Improve support for the Lightning protocol and hardware wallets.

• KeePassXC from 2.6.2 to 2.7.4

  • Add entry tags.
  • Support dark mode.
  • Redesign history view.

• Metadata Cleaner from 1.0.2 to 2.4.0

  • Redesign the whole user interface.
  • Support dark mode.
  • Add support for AIFF and HEIC files.

• OnionShare from 2.2-3 to 2.6-5

  • Redesign the whole user interface.
  • Allow creating chat rooms.
  • Allow hosting static websites.

• Text Editor from gedit to gnome-text-editor

  • Support dark mode.

• Inkscape from 1.0.2 to 1.2.2

• Audacity from 2.4.2 to 3.2.4

• Gimp from 2.10.22 to 2.10.34

• Kleopatra from 4:20.08 to 4:22.12

Removed features

• Remove the item Remove metadata from the shortcut menu of the Files browser.

  The developers of MAT2, the metadata removal library used by Metadata Cleaner are not providing this option anymore.

• Remove the item Wipe and Wipe available disk space from the shortcut menu of the Files browser.

  Secure deletion is not reliable enough on USB sticks and SSDs for us to keep advertising this feature. We are still discussing which alternatives to explain in our documentation on secure deletion. (#19121)

• Remove GtkHash

  You can still install GtkHash as Additional Software.

Fixed problems

• Fix several issues with special characters and non-Latin scripts in the screen keyboard. (#18076)

Changelog

For more details about what has changed in Tails 6.0~rc1, read our changelog.

Known issues

• Tails 6.0~rc1 is not reliably reproducible (#20165, #20166).

• OnionShare 2.6 has several issues in Tails and Debian 12 (Bookworm) in general that have security implications:

  • OnionShare stays open in the background and fails to reopen. (#20135)

  • OnionShare crashes when stopping and restarting file shares in OnionShare. (#20140)

  Despite the very interesting new features in OnionShare 2.6, we are considering keeping OnionShare 2.2 in Tails 6.0 because of these issues.

• Mounting external devices automatically interferes badly with some other features:

  • The Back Up Persistent Storage utility (#20143)

  • Tails Cloner (#20154)

• The pointer doesn't change into a spinner anymore in some cases when launching applications. (#19920)

Send us feedback

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 before February 18 to either:

• tails-testers@boum.org (public mailing list)

• tails-support-private@boum.org (private email)

Get Tails 6.0~rc1

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your Persistent Storage

Automatic upgrades are not available to 6.0~rc1.

You have to do a manual upgrade.

You will be able to automatically upgrade from 6.0~rc1 to 6.0 when it is released.

To download 6.0~rc1

Direct download

• For USB sticks (USB image) (OpenPGP signature)

• For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image) (OpenPGP signature)

BitTorrent download

• For USB sticks (USB image)

• For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)

To install Tails 6.0~rc1 on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

• Install from Windows

• Install from macOS

• Install from Linux

• Install from Debian or Ubuntu using the command line and GnuPG