I want to encrypt some personal files so that if someone gets ahold of my laptop, at least they can't access these files. The tool that is supposed to do this is software called gpg.

I type "gpg -c filename" and it creates an encrypted version of the file called filename.gpg - so far so good.

But then to decrypt the file, I type "gpg -d filename.gpg", and it decrypts the file WITHOUT prompting me for a password. After looking into this, I found that the default behavior of gpg is that after you encrypt a file, it automatically stores the password in some location on your computer so that you don't have to type it again when you want to decrypt. WHAT STUPID ASSHOLE THOUGHT TO MAKE THIS THE DEFAULT BEHAVIOR.

I found methods that purport to turn off this behavior, for example the ones listed here:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/193588/how-can-i-tell-gpg-that-i-do-not-want-password-caching-for-a-specific-program/193595

But every time I try out one of these methods, it doesn't work. Presumably because the developers keep changing how to turn it off.

There should just be a simple way of encrypting a file, where you give it a password, and it encrypts it, and you have the peace of mind of knowing that no one without the password can open it. There shouldn't be this crap that you have to turn off in order for it to work. And even if I fix this particular crap, how can I have the peace of mind of knowing that there is no other stupid crap that I didn't catch?