Encrypting a password using gpg without constantly asking for password

Question

I have a service that checks my email regularly, and I use gpg to encrypt my email password. The problem is that every time I lock my computer or after a certain amount of time gpg shows a graphical interface to ask for the password.

Is there a way, even if it's less secure, to have gpg remember my password until I restart my computer? Or perhaps use my log-in password which I have to input anyways to unlock my computer? If that's not possible with gpg, is there another tool that can achieve this?

Answer 1

GPG can not directly be set to keep the password until restart, but you can change the time it caches the passwords to a very long time, e.g. a year. Add the following lines to $GNUPGHOME/gpg-agent.conf ($GNUPGHOME is usually ~/.config/gnupg):

default-cache-ttl 31536000
max-cache-ttl 31536000

This sets the time for caching passphrases to one year (31536000 seconds). default-cache-ttl is the normal caching time, which is reset when the key is used (so on each use it is cached longer), while max-cache-ttl limits the total time including extensions.