[[!meta title="Tails 4.2 is out"]]
[[!meta date="Tue, 07 Jan 2020 17:00:00 +0000"]]
[[!pagetemplate template="news.tmpl"]]
[[!tag announce]]

This release fixes [[many security
vulnerabilities|security/Numerous_security_holes_in_4.1.1]]. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

[[!toc levels=1]]

# Improvements to automatic upgrades

We worked on important improvements to the automatic upgrade feature,
which is still one of your major pain points when using Tails:

- Until now, if your version of Tails was several months old, you
  sometimes had to do 2 or more automatic upgrades in a row.  For
  example, to upgrade from Tails 3.12 to Tails 3.16, you first had to
  upgrade to Tails 3.14.

  Starting with 4.2, direct automatic upgrades will be available from
  all prior versions to the latest version.

- Until now, you could only do a limited number of automatic upgrades,
  after which you had to do a much more complicated [["manual"
  upgrade|doc/upgrade#manual]].

  Starting with 4.2, you will only have to do a manual upgrade between
  major versions, for example to upgrade to Tails 5.0 in 2021.

- We made automatic upgrades use less memory.

- We optimized a bit the size of the download when doing automatic
  upgrades.

# New features

- We included several command line tools used by
  [*SecureDrop*](https://securedrop.org/) users to analyze the metadata
  of leaked documents on computers that cannot use the *[[Additional
  Software|doc/first_steps/additional_software]]* feature:

  - [*PDF Redact Tools*](https://github.com/firstlookmedia/pdf-redact-tools)
    to redact and strip metadata from text documents before publishing
  - [*Tesseract OCR*](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract)
    to convert images containing text into a text document
  - [*FFmpeg*](https://ffmpeg.org/) to record and convert audio and video

# Changes and upgrades

- Update *Tor Browser* to 9.0.3.

- Update *Thunderbird* to [68.3.0](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/68.3.0/releasenotes/).

- Update *Linux* to 5.3.15.

# Fixed problems

- Open *~/Persistent/keepassx.kdbx* by default when starting *KeePassX*.
  If this database does not exist yet, stop pointing to it in the list
  of recent databases.

  [[!img version_4.0/keepassxc.png link="no" alt=""]]

For more details, read our [[!tails_gitweb debian/changelog desc="changelog"]].

<a id="known-issues"></a>

# Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of [[long-standing issues|support/known_issues]].

# Get Tails 4.2

## To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

- Automatic upgrades are available from 4.0, 4.1, and 4.1.1 to 4.2.

- If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an
  automatic upgrade, please try to do a [[manual upgrade|doc/upgrade/#manual]].

## To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

  - [[Install from Windows|install/win]]
  - [[Install from macOS|install/mac]]
  - [[Install from Linux|install/linux]]

<div class="caution"><p>All the data on this USB stick will be lost.</p></div>

## To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can directly download
Tails 4.2:

  - [[For USB sticks (USB image)|install/download]]
  - [[For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)|install/download-iso]]

# What's coming up?

Tails 4.3 is [[scheduled|contribute/calendar]] for February 11.

Have a look at our [[!tails_roadmap]] to see where we are heading to.

We need your help and there are many ways to [[contribute to
Tails|contribute]] (<a href="https://tails.boum.org/donate/?r=4.2">donating</a> is only one of
them). Come [[talk to us|about/contact#tails-dev]]!