Paper Age
My laptop is gone. My password manager database lives in the cloud - but the cloud storage password is a random 40-character string that only exists inside that password manager. Classic chicken-and-egg. My solution: print the password on paper, encrypted. paper-age is a tool that takes any secret and produces a printable PDF containing a QR code with the data encrypted using age - passphrase-based symmetric encryption. One passphrase to remember, everything else on paper.
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Home » Today I Learned paper-age April 28, 2026 · 1 min · Marcin Cylke My laptop is gone. My password manager database lives in the cloud - but the cloud storage password is a random 40-character string that only exists inside that password manager. Classic chicken-and-egg. My solution: print the password on paper, encrypted. paper-age is a tool that takes any secret and produces a printable PDF containing a QR code with the data encrypted using age - passphrase-based symmetric encryption. One passphrase to remember, everything else on paper. I put my cloud credentials into in.txt, then run: gzip --best --stdout in.txt | paper-age --output=compressed.pdf --title="my cloud storage" The tool prompts for a passphrase, then generates a PDF. I print it and store it somewhere physical and safe.
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