Email instructions are unclear to people who type their bridges

In August, I did some usability tests of Tails 4.22, which includes our new Tor Connection.

Currently, the "simplest" (though really tedious) way of getting custom bridges in Tails is to request bridges over email through their phone and type them in Tails, because we don't have neither Moat nor Snowflake yet.

It's really tedious but better than nothing. Some test participants were determined enough to gave it a try but failed nonetheless.

Here is how the email displayed on their phone:

Some of their pain points could be solved by improving the content of the email:

• It was unclear where to type line breaks, because the long bridge line wrapped many times on their small display and there was no clear separation between the 2 bridges.

  I think that it would help to separate both bridges more clearly, with some colored background and headings. Unless I'm mistaken, both Tor Browser and Tails only try to use the 1st bridge in the list, so encouraging people to type or copy only 1 line would not lead to less connectivity.

• Some characters were hard to interpret: I? 1? |?

  Using a fixed width font, for example inside a <pre> tag, might help people distinguish ambiguous characters.

• A test participant wondered whether the bridges should be typed in Tor Browser in Tails instead of in our Tor Connection assistant, because that's what the email instructed.

  We could have different instructions for Tor Browser and Tails.

I understand that making bridges easier to type or improve the email for Tails users might not be a priority for the Tor team. We're also conscious at Tails that providing better alternatives, like scanning the QR code, would be much better for our users. So I'd like you to tell me which of these improvements you would be interested in working on until then.

I could work on the phrasing of the email myself and ask our coders to submit a patch if needed.