OpenGPG Key and Password Expire Time

By Joel Dare - Updated March 13, 2024 - Written March 11, 2024

I use OpenGPG to sign Git commits on Github and my passwords were expiring too quickly.

I originally tried to increase the key expire times, but this is when the key becomes invalid, not how long the password is cached.

Set Password Expire Time

If the file ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf doesn’t exist (which is likely), create it.
Add use-agent on it’s own line to the gpg.conf file.
Add default-cache-ttl 86400 to set the password to cache for 1 day.

Set Key Expire Time

You can list your keys with the following command.

gpg --list-keys

You can set how long a key lasts before it expires with the following command. GPG will prompt you for how long to allow the key to be valid.

gpg --edit-key [key-id] expire

Type quit to exit GPG and select y to save.

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