About Gpg4win

Gpg4win (GNU Privacy Guard for Windows) is an encryption software to sign and encrypt files and emails.

What is Gpg4win?

Gpg4win enables users to securely transport emails and files with the help of encryption and digital signatures. Encryption protects the contents against an unwanted party reading it. Digital signatures make sure that it was not modified and comes from a specific sender.

Gpg4win supports both relevant cryptography standards, OpenPGP and S/MIME (X.509), and is the official GnuPG distribution for Windows. It is maintained by the developers of GnuPG. Gpg4win and the software included with Gpg4win are Free Software (Open Source; among other things free of charge for all commercial and non-commercial purposes).

Creation of Gpg4win was supported by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

Gpg4win Components

Gpg4win is an installer for Windows and contains several Free Software components:

• GnuPG

  The backend; this is the actual encryption tool.

• Kleopatra

  A certificate manager for OpenPGP and X.509 (S/MIME) and common crypto dialogs.

• GpgOL

  An add-in for Microsoft Outlook providing email cryptography. Supports both IMAP/SMTP and MS Exchange servers.

• GpgEX

  A plugin for Microsoft Explorer (file encryption).

• GPA

  An alternative certificate manager for OpenPGP and X.509 (S/MIME).
  Note: Since version 4.1.0 GPA is not included in Gpg4win anymore.

System Requirements

The system requirements are listed seperately.

Major Version 3 came 2017

In September 2017, the major Version 3 was released.

Aim of Gpg4win Initiative

The Gpg4win initiative aims to provide a current Gpg4win Windows installation package including the GnuPG encryption tool and associated applications. The documentation ("Gpg4win Compendium") is maintained as part of the effort.

Another goal is to support OpenPGP and S/MIME in a unified way.

Gpg4win is an international effort. Due to the origins of the initiative there is a full German translation. Additional translators are welcome!

A main achievement of Gpg4win is to focus on the builder, which allows to easily create updated installers. The builder runs best on a GNU/Linux system. Almost all software components are automatically cross-compiled for integration into the installer. Thus Gpg4win does not depend on a single person to manually create the installer.

Short Study: Sustainable Free Software

Before Gpg4win2 was developed, Jan-Oliver Wagner and Bernhard Reiter wrote a short study about "Sustainable Free Software: From project to permanent activity, using the example Gpg4win".

Features & Screenshots

Read more about the features of Gpg4win. Get a first impression of Gpg4win from the screenshots.