gpg Command Examples

GNU Privacy Guard, an OpenPGP encryption and signing tool. More information: https://gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/Invoking-GPG.html.

• Create a GPG public and private key interactively:

gpg --full-generate-key

• List all keys from the public keyring:

gpg {{[-k|--list-keys]}}

• 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 {{[-es|--encrypt --sign]}} {{[-r|--recipient]}} {{alice@example.com}} {{[-r|--recipient]}} {{bob@example.com}} {{doc.txt}}

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

gpg {{[-c|--symmetric]}} {{doc.txt}}

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

gpg {{[-d|--decrypt]}} {{doc.txt.gpg}}

• Import a public key:

gpg --import {{public.gpg}}

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

gpg {{--export|--export-secret-keys}} {{[-a|--armor]}} {{alice@example.com}}