age

Screenshot

About age

age ("actually good encryption") is a simple, modern file encryption tool, format, and Go library created by Filippo Valsorda. It favors small explicit keys, no config options, and no metadata leakage over the flexibility of formats like OpenPGP. Encryption uses X25519 for key exchange and ChaCha20-Poly1305 for the payload, with keys that are short enough to read over the phone or fit on a business card. Files can be encrypted to one or more recipient public keys, to a passphrase (using scrypt), or to existing SSH keys (Ed25519 and RSA) via ssh-agent or SSH identity files, avoiding the need for a separate keypair. An age-keygen tool generates identities, output can optionally be ASCII-armored for copy-pasting, and a plugin system (age-plugin) extends recipients to hardware tokens like YubiKeys and other backends without changing the core format. The CLI, format, and library are intentionally minimal by design, and a compatible Rust implementation (rage) exists alongside the reference Go implementation. age is released under the BSD 3-Clause License and works on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Key Features

• Small, explicit X25519 keys instead of complex keyrings
• ChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption
• Multiple recipients supported per encrypted file
• Passphrase-based encryption using scrypt
• Encrypt directly to existing SSH (Ed25519/RSA) keys
• Optional ASCII armoring for text-safe output
• Plugin system for hardware tokens (e.g. YubiKey) and custom recipients
• No configuration options or format flexibility to misuse
• Reference Go implementation plus a compatible Rust implementation (rage)
• Cross-platform: Linux, macOS, Windows

Useful Links