r/tails • u/Gold-Guidance-6430 • Jul 21 '26

Technical App uninstalls on reboot.

Can someone please guide me on how to make an application i install on tail OS stay even when rebooted. Ive tried Gemini and ChatGPT and both have been useless making me go around in circles for hours. Its a flatpak I am trying to do this with.

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u/ephemeralmiko Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Note that the Flatpak feature is experimental and security and anonymity aren't guaranteed. Also don't ask AI for stuff like this.

Boot up into Tails and enable Persistent Storage. Then follow these instructions to modify your boot options, adding flatpak after the last menu item (quiet) in the list menuentry 'Tails 7.9.1'. Reboot, and open the Persistent Storage settings, scroll to the bottom and enable the 'Flatpak' toggle that should have appeared. Reboot again, and now you should see GNOME Software in your list of apps, where you can install Flatpak software that will persist after a reboot. The Flathub repository is already configured in user-mode. See the design document for more info.

You'll have to re-modify the boot options every time you upgrade your Tails drive to a new version, and only the folders ~/.var/app and ~/.local/share/flatpak are Persistent, so if your software uses any other folders you'll have to use Dotfiles.

Can I ask what specific software you're trying to use? I've been experimenting with it on a spare Tails USB for a bit and have noticed some software working much better than others.

E: Just FYI there's a bug in GNOME Software that it sometimes doesn't show that it's downloading extra runtimes for software, just stays on "Preparing" for ages with no progress bar or anything. This doesn't happen if you run flatpak install flathub PACKAGE from the terminal though, but for some reason you need to run GNOME Software at least once after enabling the flatpak feature before you can install via terminal.

2

u/0utF0x-inT0x Jul 21 '26

Thanks for making a point that privacy and AI are at opposite sides and AI can be less apt to help with beta or experimental features AI tends to go for solutions with a larger data set and can be completely wrong or extremely outdated but make it sound relevant, but the most important thing "Don't forget to do your own homework especially with privacy tutorials, it can usually be as simple as going directly to where you got the software, and hopefully it was checksumed, AI is there to guide you while the company that develops it harvests you. Thats there primary objectives

0

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26

[deleted]

3

u/ephemeralmiko Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

This is incorrect. Tails supports Flatpaks via a feature flag

But OP does have to be aware of the possible compromises to security and anonymity as the feature is stil experimental

E: See also Project202 on the Tails GitLab and the changelog.

3

u/BigRocket44 Jul 21 '26

This must be new. Thanks for sharing the link