Install age with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• age
• age-inspect
• age-keygen
• age-plugin-batchpass

Project history

age was designed by Ben Cartwright-Cox and Filippo Valsorda and the public repository was created in May 2019. The README describes it as a simple, modern, secure file encryption tool, format, and Go library with small explicit keys, post-quantum support, no config options, and Unix-style composability.

The first beta releases appeared in December 2019, including a beta named from the floor of 36C3. Release candidates followed in 2021, and age v1.0.0 was published in September 2021. The 1.1.0 release in December 2022 added plugin and YubiKey support, helping turn age from a single CLI into a format with a hardware and plugin ecosystem.

The project continued with v1.2.x in 2024 and v1.3.x in December 2025. The v1.3.0 release was explicitly described upstream as a post-quantum release, matching the README's current positioning of age as a format and tool with post-quantum support.

Adoption history

age became widely packaged for a security CLI. The upstream README lists installation commands for Homebrew, MacPorts, winget, Alpine, Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Guix, Nix, openSUSE, Ubuntu, Void, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Chocolatey, and Scoop, and it asks new packagers for help. The supplied package metadata also records major Linux and Windows package-manager names.

The ecosystem around age includes plugins, alternate implementations, browser/TypeScript work, Passage, and an awesome-age list. That adoption pattern is important: age is not just a command named by package managers, but a small format other tools embed.

How it is used

The canonical CLI flow is `age-keygen -o key.txt`, encryption with `age -r RECIPIENT`, and decryption with `age --decrypt -i key.txt`. The README documents recipient files, identity files, passphrase encryption, SSH public keys as recipients, and stdin/stdout friendly operation for shell pipelines.

age has intentionally no global config file documented by upstream. Instead, users pass identity and recipient files explicitly, which is part of its packaging appeal: the installed binary is portable, scriptable, and easy to compose with tar, password managers, backups, and deployment tooling.

Why package nerds care

age is the package-manager-friendly successor-shaped tool many users wanted for file encryption: one small CLI, readable key files, no daemon, no keyring requirement, and simple static-ish binary distribution. Its packaging matrix and plugin convention make it a useful case study in how a security format gets from a GitHub repo to distro repositories and operator scripts.

For package nerds, the interesting bit is that age's minimalism is a distribution feature. The same project is a Go module, a command-line binary, a file format specification, and an ecosystem anchor for Rust, TypeScript, YubiKey, Secure Enclave, and password-manager integrations.

Timeline

• 2019: GitHub repository created.
• 2019: First beta releases published.
• 2021: v1.0.0 released.
• 2022: v1.1.0 released with plugin and YubiKey support.
• 2024: v1.2.x releases published.
• 2025: v1.3.0 released with post-quantum support.

Related projects

• rage is the alternative interoperable Rust implementation named by the age README.
• typage is the TypeScript implementation named by the age README.
• age-plugin-yubikey provides hardware PIV token support.
• age-plugin-se provides Apple Secure Enclave support.
• awesome-age collects plugins, implementations, tools, and integrations.

Sources

• official GitHub releases API
• official GitHub repository metadata
• official age specification and man page
• source_facts.package-manager
• upstream README