GPG Symmetric encryption

2026-04-07 by madcap

This is just a reminder that GnuPG can do symmetric encryption using a password or passphrase.

It is not recommended. You should do encryption using a strong key, but it's a simpler method and sometimes simpler is good enough.

Encrypt a file

gpg --symmetric cleartext.txt

GnuPG will ask for a passphrase and create a file cleartext.txt.gpg.

Decrypt a file

gpg --output cleartext.txt --decrypt cleartext.txt.gpg

GnuPG will ask for your passphrase and output the file to cleartext.txt.