gpg Command Examples

GNU Privacy Guard. See gpg2 for GNU Privacy Guard 2. Most operating systems symlink gpg to gpg2. More information: https://gnupg.org.

• Create a GPG public and private key interactively:

gpg --full-generate-key

• Sign doc.txt without encryption (writes output to doc.txt.asc):

gpg --clearsign {{doc.txt}}

• Encrypt and sign doc.txt for alice@example.com and bob@example.com (output to doc.txt.gpg):

gpg --encrypt --sign --recipient {{alice@example.com}} --recipient {{bob@example.com}} {{doc.txt}}

• Encrypt doc.txt with only a passphrase (output to doc.txt.gpg):

gpg --symmetric {{doc.txt}}

• Decrypt doc.txt.gpg (output to stdout):

gpg --decrypt {{doc.txt.gpg}}

• Import a public key:

gpg --import {{public.gpg}}

• Export public key for alice@example.com (output to stdout):

gpg --export --armor {{alice@example.com}}

• Export private key for alice@example.com (output to stdout):

gpg --export-secret-keys --armor {{alice@example.com}}