The age Encryption Tool: Modern GPG Alternative

age (Actually Good Encryption) was designed by Filippo Valsorda and Ben Cartwright-Cox as a simple, modern alternative to GPG. The design rejects GPG's complexity: no key rings, no trust model, no key signing, no configuration files, no plugin ecosystem for core operations. age focuses on doing one thing well: encrypting and decrypting files in a straightforward, hard-to-misuse way.

The primary recipient type in age is an age public key, derived from X25519. age-keygen generates a key pair: an age public key (starting with age1) and an age identity file containing the private key. To encrypt to a recipient, specify their age public key with -r age1...; to decrypt, provide your identity file with -i key.txt. The format is designed to be copy-paste safe.