These steps are for EVERY GPG signing. That is, you don’t want to use the tedious —default-key on the CLI anymore.
List your signatures:
gpg —list-signatures
Select your key to be that default. Then set the key default:
echo ‘default-key:0:”xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’ | gpgconf —change-options gpg
please note that there is only ONE double-quote, which signifies that a text string is about to begin. Also that there is a pair of single-quote surround the entire echo statement.
there are three values separated by two colon symbols.
- First is the configuration keyword option “default-key”
- Second is pretty much always ‘0’, which means no special flag bit set. ‘16’ means to delete the key from its configuration file.
Also for gpgconf, the —change-options requires an argument. That argument indicates a component name that helps chooses which configuration file to make the change with. Component names used are commonly gpg for the ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf file and gpg-agent for ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf file.
Once the setting of default key is done, if you want to use a different key of yours, use the —local-user <your name> on the gpg command line just for that message. Or the easier -u <your name> option instead.
Note that -u or --local-user overrides this —default-key at CLI or in gpg.conf