What it is
age encrypts files. You encrypt to someone’s short public key, or to a passphrase, and only the matching private key or passphrase can decrypt the result. It does one job, has no settings to get wrong, and is a simpler alternative to GPG for sending or storing a file safely. age-keygen makes a key pair, and age can also encrypt to SSH public keys.
age -p -o notes.txt.age notes.txt
Why it’s here
- Hard to misuse. There are no ciphers or options to pick.
- Small keys. A public key fits on one line, so it’s easy to share.
- Works with SSH keys. Encrypt a file to a colleague’s existing
ssh-ed25519key.
On CoreDesktop
age is installed from pacman, with nothing extra configured. Run age in a terminal. update keeps it current with the rest of the Arch packages.