GPGV(1)

💖 GPGV(1) 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for gpgv, and it lives in the GNU Privacy Guard 1.4 family of docs, manual section 1. It's giving ✨signature verification✨ and nothing else, and honestly? icon ✨ She's the chill, no-nonsense little sister of gpg and she does exactly one thing. Let's get into it. 🫶

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🎀 NAME 🎀

gpgv — verify OpenPGP signatures. That's it. That's the whole job. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gpgv [options] signed_files

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

gpgv is an OpenPGP signature verification tool, periodt.

Here's the tea: this program is actually a stripped-down version of gpg which is only able to check signatures. She is somewhat smaller than the fully-blown gpg (yes, she's petite, she's efficient, we love her) and she uses a different (and simpler) way to check that the public keys used to make the signature are valid. There are no configuration files and only a few options are implemented. Minimalist queen 👑

Big important vibe: gpgv assumes that all keys in the keyring are trustworthy. That does also mean that it does not check for expired or revoked keys. No background checks, no drama, no questions asked. 🫣

By default a keyring named trustedkeys.gpg is used. This default keyring is assumed to be in the home directory of GnuPG — either the default home directory or the one set by an option or an environment variable. The option --keyring may be used to specify a different keyring or even multiple keyrings. Mix and match, babe. 💖

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🌈 RETURN VALUE 🌈

• returns 0 if everything is fine 😌
• returns 1 if at least one signature was bad 💀
• and other error codes for fatal errors (like, the whole thing fell over, not just one sig)

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

gpgv recognizes these options, bestie:

• --verbose, -v — Gives more information during processing. If used twice, the input data is listed in detail. Double it up for the full lore dump. 🔍
• --quiet, -q — Try to be as quiet as possible. 🤫
• --keyring file — Add file to the list of keyrings. If file begins with a tilde and a slash, these are replaced by the HOME directory. If the filename does not contain a slash, it is assumed to be in the home-directory ("~/.gnupg" if --homedir is not used).
• --status-fd n — Write special status strings to the file descriptor n. See the file DETAILS in the documentation for a listing of them.
• --logger-fd n — Write log output to file descriptor n and not to stderr.
• --ignore-time-conflict — GnuPG normally checks that the timestamps associated with keys and signatures have plausible values. However, sometimes a signature seems to be older than the key due to clock problems. This option turns these checks into warnings. 🕰️ (blame the clock, not the key)
• --homedir dir — Set the name of the home directory to dir. If this option is not used, the home directory defaults to '~/.gnupg'. It is only recognized when given on the command line. It also overrides any home directory stated through the environment variable 'GNUPGHOME' or (on Windows systems) by means of the Registry entry HKCU\Software\GNU\GnuPG:HomeDir.

On Windows systems it is possible to install GnuPG as a portable application. In this case only this command line option is considered, all other ways to set a home directory are ignored. 👑

To install GnuPG as a portable application under Windows, create an empty file name 'gpgconf.ctl' in the same directory as the tool 'gpgconf.exe'. The root of the installation is than that directory; or, if 'gpgconf.exe' has been installed directly below a directory named 'bin', its parent directory. You also need to make sure that the following directories exist and are writable: 'ROOT/home' for the GnuPG home and 'ROOT/var/cache/gnupg' for internal cache files. Don't skip this part, fr fr — no writable dirs, no vibes. 🗂️

• --weak-digest name — Treat the specified digest algorithm as weak. Signatures made over weak digests algorithms are normally rejected. This option can be supplied multiple times if multiple algorithms should be considered weak. MD5 is always considered weak, and does not need to be listed explicitly. 🚫 (MD5 catching strays, but deservedly)

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

gpgv pgpfile

gpgv sigfile [datafile]

Verify the signature of the file. The second form is used for detached signatures, where sigfile is the detached signature (either ASCII-armored or binary) and datafile contains the signed data; if datafile is "-" the signed data is expected on stdin; if datafile is not given the name of the file holding the signed data is constructed by cutting off the extension (".asc", ".sig" or ".sign") from sigfile. ✂️ so clever, honestly.

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🧚 FILES 🧚

• ~/.gnupg/trustedkeys.gpg — The default keyring with the allowed keys. Your little VIP list. 💌

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💜 ENVIRONMENT 💜

• HOME — Used to locate the default home directory.
• GNUPGHOME — If set directory used instead of "~/.gnupg".

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• gpg2(1)

The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If GnuPG and the info program are properly installed at your site, the command

info gnupg

should give you access to the complete manual including a menu structure and an index. Go read it, bestie, it's a whole thing. 📚

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aaaand that's the whole page!! 🎀 this was GnuPG 1.4.23, dated 2026-01-20, and it's the GPGV(1) page — mwah, slay, verified with love 💅✨💖