Yep. You can also put the word armor on a separate line in ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf, and it will ASCII armor the text for you (put it in a .asc file) without having to type the -a each time. Command line gpg is very forgiving. It will ask you for any info that you don't give it in the command. So the minimum you need to type to encrypt a message is: gpg -e It will ask for the recipients, and as long as you type some (unique) part of the name, address or key ID, it will select the right one. You can keep entering recipients until you leave the recipient field blank, then it will give you a cursor where you can type your message, and hit ctrl+d when you're done. It will encrypt the message right in the terminal. No need to create text files every time you write a message. I only do that for really long messages. Likewise, when decrypting messages sent to me, usually don't paste them into a text file. I type gpg -d hit enter, and paste the message directly into the terminal, then hit ctrl+d. It's actually faster than a GUI PGP program, at least if you spend most of your time with a terminal open anyway.