Ansible Vault is a feature of ansible that allows you to keep sensitive data such as passwords or keys in encrypted files, rather than as plaintext in playbooks or roles. These vault files can then be distributed or placed in source control.

The ansible-vault encrypt_string command will encrypt and format a provided string
into a format that can be included in ansible-playbook YAML files.

Passing vault key file.

$ ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-password-file=.vault --name 'some_easy_label' ‘secret’

Without vault key file.

$ ansible-vault encrypt_string --name 'some_easy_label' 'secret'

As input (copy/paste)

$ ansible-vault encrypt_string --name 'some_easy_label'