Can I configure pass to always use pinentry-curses?

Question

I use pinentry-qt most of the time, but in the specific case that I'm using pass, I would like to use pinentry-curses because of the faster startup time.

Is there a way that I can configure pass to always call pinentry-curses, while keeping pinentry-qt the system default?

The system is Fedora with KDE.

This seems closely related but I don't know enough to apply it to pass: Change pinentry program temporarily with gpg-agent

Answer 1

Taking inspiration from the question you linked:

1. Create a wrapper script for pinentry (~/bin/pinentry-wrapper):

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   #
   # Defaults to Qt, with a choice of curses for selected programs
   # PINENTRY_USER_DATA is a GnuPG defined variable (see man gpg)
   
   case "$PINENTRY_USER_DATA" in
       curses)
           exec /usr/bin/pinentry-curses "$@"
           ;;
       *)
           exec /usr/bin/pinentry-qt "$@"
           ;;
   esac
   

2. Make the script executable:

   $ chmod u+x ~/bin/pinentry-wrapper
   

3. Instruct GnuGP to use your version of pinentry (~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf):

   pinentry-program /home/neftas/bin/pinentry-wrapper
   

4. Restart the gpg-agent:

   $ pkill -HUP gpg-agent
   

5. Create a wrapper script for pass (~/bin/pass):

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   
   PINENTRY_USER_DATA=curses /usr/bin/pass "$@"
   

6. Make executable:

   $ chmod u+x ~/bin/pass
   

7. Make sure ~/bin is searched first in your PATH (put this in your .bashrc):

   $ export PATH="~/bin:$PATH"
   

8. Check your work:

   $ command -v pass
   /home/neftas/bin/pass
   

All of these scripts were written on Arch Linux, so the locations may be different on your distro.