There are 2 ways of shutting down Tails.

  1. Shutdown from the system menu
  2. Emergency shutdown

With both techniques, all the data stored in RAM is securely erased to protect you from cold boot attacks.

Shutdown from the system menu

Click on the system menu in the upper right corner of the screen.

  • Choose Shutdown icon to shutdown the computer.

  • Choose Restart icon to restart the computer on Tails or on your regular operating system.

Emergency shutdown

To trigger an emergency shutdown, unplug the USB stick or eject the DVD from which Tails is running. Doing so might be faster than shutting down from the system menu.

You risk breaking your Persistent Storage and losing data when you unplug your USB stick while Tails is running.

If you use a Persistent Storage, only unplug your Tails USB stick in an emergency.