Decrypt Rails config credentials on a newly cloned repository

Rails uses a key to decrypt the config/credentials.yml.enc. By default, the key is in a file config/master.key.

If you’ve created a rails app and pushed it to a remote repository and then cloned that same rails app on a different computer, you’ll receive the following error:

rails Couldn't decrypt config/credentials.yml.enc. Perhaps you passed the wrong key

This could also happen if you accidentally change your master.key since it will no longer succesfully decrypt the encrypted credential files.

If you just want to regenerate your encrypted credentials and key, you can delete config/credentials.yml.enc and run the command:

bin/rails credentials:edit

This will regenerate both the key and the encrypted credentials file for you.

Take care because if you’ve added items to your encrypted credentials file, they will be lost.