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What Encryption to Self Is

When you encrypt a message with another person's public key ("to his or her key"), the message can only be decrypted by that other person (i.e., by his secret key), not by you. Although this may seem strange, it is typical for the asymmetric encryption that is the basis for almost all modern message encryption systems. Thus, if you do not keep a plain text copy of an encrypted message yourself, you may not be able to reconstruct it.

However, you can encrypt the message to the other person's key and to yourself (i.e., to your own key). Such a message can be decrypted by either the other person's secret key or your own secret key. This way, if you keep a copy of the encrypted message, you are able to reconstruct it later, provided you kept your key.

Encrypt to Self With InstantCrypt

Since version 2.3, InstantCrypt's default setting is, with every encryption to make also an encryption to the signing key, just in case. This feature is called "Encryption-to-Self". If you use InstantCrypt, you may not need the possibility to re-decrypt a sent encrypted message, because InstantCrypt keeps all the corresponding plain messages. But in other circumstances this possibility may come in handy. Depending on your own judgment, you can disable the Encrypt to Self feature under Main Manu | Options. If you have no strong reasons either way, just leave it as it is.

Before version 2.3, InstantCrypt did not and could not make an encryption to Self.