How to encrypt a message you can paste anywhere

Same protection as file encryption, wrapped so it survives being pasted through chat, email or a ticket.

Sometimes what you need to protect is a paragraph rather than a file — a recovery code, a set of credentials being handed to a colleague, a note that will sit in a ticket system for years. This tool encrypts text into a block of printable characters you can paste anywhere.

Step-by-step

1. Type or paste your text.
2. Enter a password, and share it with the recipient by some route other than the one carrying the message.
3. Encrypt and copy the block. It begins and ends with marker lines so the recipient can see where it starts and stops.
4. To read one, paste the whole block in and enter the password.

Send the password separately

This is the part people get wrong. Encrypting a message and then sending the password in the next message on the same channel protects you against almost nothing — whoever can read one can read the other. Send the message by email and the password by phone, or in person, or through a different app.

Why it survives copying

Encrypted output is arbitrary bytes, and arbitrary bytes do not survive being pasted through software that "helpfully" reformats things. The block is encoded in Base64url and wrapped at a fixed width, so it passes through mail clients, chat apps and ticket systems intact.

The reader is deliberately forgiving about what comes back: extra whitespace, wrapped lines and missing marker lines are all tolerated, because a message that has been through three systems rarely arrives pristine. What is not tolerated is a single altered character in the ciphertext — that fails outright, because the underlying mode is authenticated and detects tampering rather than producing garbage.

The same container as file encryption

Underneath, this is identical to the file tool: PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA-256 at 600,000 iterations with a fresh salt, then AES-256-GCM with a fresh nonce, with the header authenticated alongside the message.

Frequently asked questions

Can I decrypt on a different device?

Yes. Open the same page anywhere, paste the block, enter the password. Nothing is stored on the device that encrypted it.

Why is the encrypted text so much longer than my message?

It carries the salt, the nonce and an authentication tag alongside the ciphertext, and Base64 encoding adds about a third. For short messages the fixed overhead dominates.

Someone changed one character and now it will not decrypt. Is it recoverable?

No, and that is deliberate. The mode is authenticated, so any modification is detected and refused. Ask the sender to resend the block.