pass / gnupg is caching?

[Werner Koch]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:30, fxkl47BF--- said:

> the man page says caching is the default for symmetric encryption

Caching of ones own symmtric passphrase is a little hack and for most
users not very useful:

    gpg caches the passphrase used for symmetric encryption so that a
    decrypt operation may not require that the user needs to enter the
    passphrase.  The option --no-symkey-cache can be used to disable
    this feature.

But that was not the question here.  For the smartcard PIN's there is no
caching but the smartcards decide on their own whether you need to enter
the PIN for each signature/decryption.

The only caching for those PINs is to overcome a problem wityh Yubikeys
which do not keep the PIN-verified state when switching back and forth
between the applications (OpenPGP <-> PIV)


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that
refuse military service.             - A. Einstein
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