How to use GPG

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:46:55 +0300

GPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard. It’s a free, open-source tool that helps you encrypt and sign your data. The focus of this blog won’t be on the history of gpg - you can read more here¹ - however we will delve into how to use gpg

from creating a gpg key
to choosing which kind of key pair
ending with some useful flags to keep in mind

Creating a GPG key

first things first you’ll need to make sure you have GPG installed on your system you can check with gpg --version. If not. Check out your package manager or GnuPG official website

Create a gpg key pair

gpg --full-gen-key

Choosing which kind of GPG key

You will be prompted with different types of keys. we will choose a key that supports both signing and encrypting

Please select what kind of key you want:
   (1) RSA and RSA
   (2) DSA and Elgamal
   (3) DSA (sign only)
   (4) RSA (sign only)
   (9) ECC (sign and encrypt) *default*
  (10) ECC (sign only)
  (14) Existing key from card

My recommendation will be (9) same as the default

Please select which elliptic curve you want:
   (1) Curve 25519 *default*
   (4) NIST P-384
   (6) Brainpool P-256

I will choose the default as well. The famous algorithm Curve 25519
then you will be asked about expiration, name, email address, and finally the master password

Let’s untangle what happened. We have made a pair of public/private keys for signing and encrypting any kind of data

to view them

for binary

public: gpg --export > pub.gpg
private: gpg --export-secret-keys > private.pgp

for ASCII use --armor flag

public: gpg --armor --export > pub.asc
private: gpg --armor --export-secret-keys > private.asc

GPG flags

those are some useful flags to keep in your pocket

list pub keys: gpg --list-keys
list private keys: gpg --list-secret-keys
delete pub keys: gpg --delete-key
delete private keys: gpg --delete-secret-key
refresh keys: gpg --refresh-keys

References

What Is GPG? The Complete Guide to Open-Source Encryption ↩︎

Security on Loaay Waheed

How to use GPG

Creating a GPG key

Choosing which kind of GPG key

GPG flags

References