EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual: Caching Passphrases

5 Caching Passphrases

Typing passphrases is a troublesome task if you frequently open and close the same file. GnuPG and EasyPG Assistant provide mechanisms to remember your passphrases. However, the configuration is a bit confusing since it depends on your GnuPG installationSee GnuPG version compatibility, encryption method (symmetric or public key), and whether or not you want to use gpg-agent. Here are some questions:

Do you use GnuPG version 2.1 or 2.0 instead of GnuPG version 1.4?
Do you use symmetric encryption rather than public key encryption?
Do you want to use gpg-agent?

Here are configurations depending on your answers:

1	2	3	Configuration
Yes	Yes	Yes	Set up gpg-agent.
Yes	Yes	No	You can’t, without gpg-agent.
Yes	No	Yes	Set up gpg-agent.
Yes	No	No	You can’t, without gpg-agent.
No	Yes	Yes	Set up elisp passphrase cache.
No	Yes	No	Set up elisp passphrase cache.
No	No	Yes	Set up gpg-agent.
No	No	No	You can’t, without gpg-agent.

To set up gpg-agent, follow the instruction in GnuPG manual. see (gnupg)Invoking GPG-AGENT.

To set up elisp passphrase cache, set epa-file-cache-passphrase-for-symmetric-encryption. See Encrypting/decrypting gpg files.