Encrypting text and files using GnuPG and Kleopatra (2024)

Kleopatra is a graphicalinterface to GnuPG, a tool to encrypt andauthenticate text and files using the OpenPGP standard.

Kleopatra was added in Tails 5.0 (May 2022) to replace the OpenPGPApplet and the Passwords and Keys utility, also known asSeahorse.

Kleopatra provides equivalent features in a single tool and is moreactively developed.

With Kleopatra you can:

The Thunderbird email clientallows you to work with OpenPGP encrypted emails. Consider usingThunderbird instead of Kleopatra if you want to exchange encrypted emails.

The OpenPGP keys stored in Thunderbird are separate from the keysstored in GnuPG and visible in Kleopatra.

  1. Working with encrypted files
  2. Working with encrypted text

To store your GnuPG keys and configuration across different working sessions,you can turn on the GnuPGfeature of the Persistent Storage.

To encrypt a file:

  1. Choose Sign/Encrypt from the main window.

  2. Select the file that you want to encrypt.

  3. In the Sign/Encrypt Files dialog, either:

To decrypt a file:

  1. Choose Decrypt/Verify from the main window.

  2. Select the file that you want to decrypt.

It is unsafe to write confidential text in a web browser since JavaScriptattacks can access it from inside the browser. You should rather write andencrypt your text directly in the notepad of Kleopatra and only pastethe encrypted text in your browser.

To encrypt text:

  1. Choose Notepad from the main window.

  2. Type your text in the Notepad tab in the bottom pane.

  3. In the Recipients tab, either:

    • Specify which OpenPGP keys you want to encrypt the text to.

    • Choose Encrypt with password.

  4. Click the Encrypt Notepad button.

    This button is labeled Sign / Encrypt Notepad if the Sign as optionis selected in the Recipient tab.

To decrypt text:

  1. Choose Notepad from the main window.

  2. Paste the encrypted text in the Notepad tab in the bottom pane.

  3. Choose Decrypt/Verify Notepad.

When using Kleopatra to encrypt emails, non-ASCII characters (forexample non-Latin characters or characters with accents) might not displaycorrectly to the recipients of the email.

If you often encrypt emails, we recommend you set up OpenPGP inThunderbird instead.

Encrypting text and files using GnuPG and Kleopatra (2024)
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