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AGE(1) General Commands Manual AGE(1) NAME age - simple, modern, and secure file encryption SYNOPSIS age [--encrypt] (-r RECIPIENT | -R PATH)... [--armor] [-o OUTPUT] [INPUT] age [--encrypt] --passphrase [--armor] [-o OUTPUT] [INPUT] age --decrypt [-i PATH | -j PLUGIN]... [-o OUTPUT] [INPUT] DESCRIPTION age encrypts or decrypts INPUT to OUTPUT. The INPUT argument is optional and defaults to standard input. Only a single INPUT file may be specified. If -o is not specified, OUTPUT defaults to standard output. If -p/--passphrase is specified, the file is encrypted with a passphrase requested interactively. Otherwise, it's encrypted to one or more RECIPI- ENTS specified with -r/--recipient or -R/--recipients-file. Every recipient can decrypt the file. In -d/--decrypt mode, passphrase-encrypted files are detected automatically and the passphrase is requested interactively. Otherwise, one or more IDEN- TITIES specified with -i/--identity are used to decrypt the file. age encrypted files are binary and not malleable, with around 200 bytes of overhead per recipient, plus 16 bytes every 64KiB of plaintext. OPTIONS -o, --output=OUTPUT Write encrypted or decrypted file to OUTPUT instead of standard out- put. If OUTPUT already exists it will be overwritten. If encrypting without --armor, age will refuse to output binary to a TTY. This can be forced by specifying - as OUTPUT. --version Print the version and exit. Encryption options -e, --encrypt Encrypt INPUT to OUTPUT. This is the default. -r, --recipient=RECIPIENT Encrypt to the explicitly specified RECIPIENT. See the RECIPIENTS AND IDENTITIES section for possible recipient formats. This option can be repeated and combined with other recipient flags, and the file can be decrypted by all provided recipients indepen- dently. -R, --recipients-file=PATH Encrypt to the RECIPIENTS listed in the file at PATH, one per line. Empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored as comments. If PATH is -, the recipients are read from standard input. In this case, the INPUT argument must be specified. This option can be repeated and combined with other recipient flags, and the file can be decrypted by all provided recipients indepen- dently. -p, --passphrase Encrypt with a passphrase, requested interactively from the termi- nal. age will offer to auto-generate a secure passphrase. This option can't be used with other recipient flags. -a, --armor Encrypt to an ASCII-only "armored" encoding. age armor is a strict version of PEM with type AGE ENCRYPTED FILE, canonical "strict" Base64, no headers, and no support for leading and trailing extra data. Decryption transparently detects and decodes ASCII armoring. -i, --identity=PATH Encrypt to the RECIPIENTS corresponding to the IDENTITIES listed in the file at PATH. This is equivalent to converting the file at PATH to a recipients file with age-keygen -y and then passing that to -R/--recipients-file. For the format of PATH, see the definition of -i/--identity in the Decryption options section. -e/--encrypt must be explicitly specified when using -i/--identity in encryption mode to avoid confusion. -j PLUGIN Encrypt using the data-less plugin PLUGIN. This is equivalent to using -i/--identity with a file that contains a single plugin IDENTITY that encodes no plugin-specific data. -e/--encrypt must be explicitly specified when using -j in encryp- tion mode to avoid confusion. Decryption options -d, --decrypt Decrypt INPUT to OUTPUT. If INPUT is passphrase encrypted, it will be automatically detected and the passphrase will be requested interactively. Otherwise, the IDENTITIES specified with -i/--identity are used. ASCII armoring is transparently detected and decoded. -i, --identity=PATH Decrypt using the IDENTITIES at PATH. PATH may be one of the following: a. A file listing IDENTITIES one per line. Empty lines and lines starting with "#" are ignored as comments. b. A passphrase encrypted age file, containing IDENTITIES one per line like above. The passphrase is requested interactively. Note that passphrase-protected identity files are not necessary for most use cases, where access to the encrypted identity file implies ac- cess to the whole system. c. An SSH private key file, in PKCS#1, PKCS#8, or OpenSSH format. If the private key is password-protected, the password is requested in- teractively only if the SSH identity matches the file. See the SSH keys section for more information, including supported key types. d. "-", causing one of the options above to be read from standard input. In this case, the INPUT argument must be specified. This option can be repeated. Identities are tried in the order in which are provided, and the first one matching one of the file's re- cipients is used. Unused identities are ignored, but it is an error if the INPUT file is passphrase-encrypted and -i/--identity is spec- ified. -j PLUGIN Decrypt using the data-less plugin PLUGIN. This is equivalent to using -i/--identity with a file that contains a single plugin IDENTITY that encodes no plugin-specific data. RECIPIENTS AND IDENTITIES RECIPIENTS are public values, like a public key, that a file can be en- crypted to. IDENTITIES are private values, like a private key, that allow decrypting a file encrypted to the corresponding RECIPIENT. Native keys Native age key pairs are generated with age-keygen(1), and provide small encodings and strong encryption based on X25519 for classic keys, and X25519 + ML-KEM-768 for post-quantum hybrid keys. The post-quantum hybrid keys are secure against future quantum computers and are the recommended recipient type for most applications. A hybrid RECIPIENT encoding begins with age1pq1 and looks like the follow- ing: age1pq167[... 1950 more characters ...] A hybrid IDENTITY encoding begins with AGE-SECRET-KEY-PQ-1 and looks like the following: AGE-SECRET-KEY-PQ-1K30MYPZAHAXHR22YHH27EGDVLU0QNSUH3DSV7J7NR3X6D9LHXNWSDLTV4T A classic RECIPIENT encoding begins with age1 and looks like the following: age1gde3ncmahlqd9gg50tanl99r960llztrhfapnmx853s4tjum03uqfssgdh A classic IDENTITY encoding begins with AGE-SECRET-KEY-1 and looks like the following: AGE-SECRET-KEY-1KTYK6RVLN5TAPE7VF6FQQSKZ9HWWCDSKUGXXNUQDWZ7XXT5YK5LSF3UTKQ A file can't be encrypted to both post-quantum and classic keys, as that would defeat the post-quantum security of the encryption. An encrypted file can't be linked to the native recipient it's encrypted to without access to the corresponding identity. SSH keys As a convenience feature, age also supports encrypting to RSA or Ed25519 ssh(1) keys. RSA keys must be at least 2048 bits. This feature employs more complex cryptography, and should only be used when a native key is not available for the recipient. Note that SSH keys might not be protected long-term by the recipient, since they are revokable when used only for au- thentication. A RECIPIENT encoding is an SSH public key in authorized_keys format (see the AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT section of sshd(8)), starting with ssh-rsa or ssh-ed25519, like the following: ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABgQDULTit0KUehbi[...]GU4BtElAbzh8= ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIH9pO5pz22JZEas[...]l1uZc31FGYMXa The comment at the end of the line, if present, is ignored. In recipient files passed to -R/--recipients-file, unsupported but valid SSH public keys are ignored with a warning, to facilitate using autho- rized_keys or GitHub .keys files. (See EXAMPLES.) An IDENTITY is an SSH private key file passed individually to -i/--iden- tity. Note that keys held on hardware tokens such as YubiKeys or accessed via ssh-agent(1) are not supported. An encrypted file can be linked to the SSH public key it was encrypted to. This is so that age can identify the correct SSH private key before re- questing its password, if any. Plugins age can be extended through plugins. A plugin is only loaded if a corre- sponding RECIPIENT or IDENTITY is specified. (Simply decrypting a file en- crypted with a plugin will not cause it to load, for security reasons among others.) A RECIPIENT for a plugin named example starts with age1example1, while an IDENTITY starts with AGE-PLUGIN-EXAMPLE-1. They both encode arbitrary plu- gin-specific data, and are generated by the plugin. When either is specified, age searches for age-plugin-example in the PATH and executes it to perform the file header encryption or decryption. The plugin may request input from the user through age to complete the opera- tion. Plugins can be freely mixed with other plugins or natively supported keys. A plugin is not bound to only encrypt or decrypt files meant for or gener- ated by the plugin. For example, a plugin can be used to decrypt files en- crypted to a native X25519 RECIPIENT or even with a passphrase. Similarly, a plugin can encrypt a file such that it can be decrypted without the use of any plugin. Plugins for which the IDENTITY/RECIPIENT distinction doesn't make sense (such as a symmetric encryption plugin) may generate only an IDENTITY and instruct the user to perform encryption with the -e/--encrypt and -i/--identity flags. Plugins for which the concept of separate identities doesn't make sense (such as a password-encryption plugin) may instruct the user to use the -j flag. age can natively encrypt to recipients starting with age1tag1 (using P-256 ECDH) or age1tagpq1 (using the ML-KEM-768 + P-256 post-quantum hybrid). These are intended to be the public side of private keys held in hardware. They are directly supported to avoid the need to install the plugin, which may be platform-specific, on the encrypting side. The tag reduces privacy, by allowing an observer to correlate files with a recipient (but not files amongst them without knowledge of the recipient), but this is also a desirable property for hardware keys that require user interaction for each decryption operation. EXIT STATUS age will exit 0 if and only if encryption or decryption are successful for the full length of the input. If an error occurs during decryption, partial output might still be gener- ated, but only if it was possible to securely authenticate it. No unauthen- ticated output is ever released. BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY Files encrypted with a stable version (not alpha, beta, or release candi- date) of age, or with any v1.0.0 beta or release candidate, will decrypt with any later version of the tool. If decrypting older files poses a security risk, doing so might cause an error by default. In this case, a flag will be provided to force the opera- tion. EXAMPLES Generate a new post-quantum identity, encrypt data, and decrypt: $ age-keygen -pq -o key.txt Public key: age1pq167[... 1950 more characters ...] $ tar cvz ~/data | age -r age1pq167[...] > data.tar.gz.age $ age -d -o data.tar.gz -i key.txt data.tar.gz.age Encrypt example.jpg to multiple recipients and output to example.jpg.age: $ age -o example.jpg.age -r age1pq167[...] -r age1pq1e3[...] example.jpg Encrypt to a list of recipients: $ cat > recipients.txt # Alice age1pq167[... 1950 more characters ...] # Bob age1pq1e3[... 1950 more characters ...] $ age -R recipients.txt example.jpg > example.jpg.age Encrypt and decrypt a file using a passphrase: $ age -p secrets.txt > secrets.txt.age Enter passphrase (leave empty to autogenerate a secure one): Using the autogenerated passphrase "release-response-step-brand-wrap-ankle-pair-unusual-sword-train". $ age -d secrets.txt.age > secrets.txt Enter passphrase: Encrypt and decrypt with a passphrase-protected identity file: $ age-keygen | age -p > key.age Public key: age1yhm4gctwfmrpz87tdslm550wrx6m79y9f2hdzt0lndjnehwj0ukqrjpyx5 Enter passphrase (leave empty to autogenerate a secure one): Using the autogenerated passphrase "hip-roast-boring-snake-mention-east-wasp-honey-input-actress". $ age -r age1yhm4gctwfmrpz87tdslm550wrx6m79y9f2hdzt0lndjnehwj0ukqrjpyx5 secrets.txt > secrets.txt.age $ age -d -i key.age secrets.txt.age > secrets.txt Enter passphrase for identity file "key.age": Encrypt and decrypt with an SSH public key: $ age -R ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub example.jpg > example.jpg.age $ age -d -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 example.jpg.age > example.jpg Encrypt and decrypt with age-plugin-yubikey: $ age-plugin-yubikey # run interactive setup, generate identity file and obtain recipient $ age -r age1yubikey1qwt50d05nh5vutpdzmlg5wn80xq5negm4uj9ghv0snvdd3yysf5yw3rhl3t secrets.txt > secrets.txt.age $ age -d -i age-yubikey-identity-388178f3.txt secrets.txt.age Encrypt to the SSH keys of a GitHub user: $ curl https://github.com/benjojo.keys | age -R - example.jpg > example.jpg.age SEE ALSO age-keygen(1), age-inspect(1) AUTHORS Filippo Valsorda age@filippo.io December 2025 AGE(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | RECIPIENTS AND IDENTITIES | EXIT STATUS | BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | AUTHORS
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