age

age (Actually Good Encryption) is a simple, modern, and highly secure file encryption tool, format, and Go library. It was designed by Filippo Valsorda and Ben Cox specifically to replace the sprawling complexity and common "footguns" of GPG for basic file encryption tasks.
Key characteristics include:

• No Configuration Options: It intentionally lacks complex configuration flags or obscure cryptographic toggles, enforcing strong, secure defaults out of the box.
• Small, Explicit Keys: It uses clean, short public keys (generated via age-keygen) and natively supports reusing existing SSH public keys (ssh-ed25519, ssh-rsa) as encryption recipients.
• UNIX-Style Composability: It behaves perfectly in terminal pipelines, allowing you to easily pipe data in and out of standard input/output.
• Post-Quantum Ready: Recent versions feature native support for hybrid post-quantum cryptography to secure files against future quantum computing capabilities.

Essentially, if you need to encrypt a backup, a text file, or a secret stream cleanly in a script or terminal without wrestling with a full GPG keyring, age is the modern standard for the job.