The White-tailed Alethe occurs in the Upper Guinea forests of West Africa. Its reddish crown and broad white tips on the outer tail feathers are distinctive. A Ghana study treated it as a sedentary forest specialist that forages for insects on the ground.
Adults have reddish olive-brown upperparts, a chestnut crown with an orange-rufous center, gray eyebrow and ear-coverts, and a white underside. The outer tail feathers end in broad white tips.
A 2015 study in southwestern Ghana treated the White-tailed Alethe as a sedentary forest specialist and ground-foraging insectivore. It is associated mainly with primary and secondary tropical rainforest but sometimes enters edges or open habitat. These observations describe the study region.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.