diff --git a/lang/js/src/Connection.js b/lang/js/src/Connection.js
index 3fd1810d..c4921d53 100644
--- a/lang/js/src/Connection.js
+++ b/lang/js/src/Connection.js
@@ -232,7 +232,9 @@ class Answer{
             return gpgme_error('CONN_UNEXPECTED_ANSWER');
         }
         let _decodedResponse = JSON.parse(atob(this._response_b64));
-        let _response = {};
+        let _response = {
+            format: 'ascii'
+        };
         let messageKeys = Object.keys(_decodedResponse);
         let poa = permittedOperations[this.operation].answer;
         if (messageKeys.length === 0){
diff --git a/lang/js/src/gpgmejs.js b/lang/js/src/gpgmejs.js
index 5bdffeb5..b86b5f18 100644
--- a/lang/js/src/gpgmejs.js
+++ b/lang/js/src/gpgmejs.js
@@ -55,8 +55,12 @@ import { createSignature } from './Signature';
 /**
  * @typedef {Object} encrypt_result The result of an encrypt operation
  * @property {String} data The encrypted message
- * @property {Boolean} base64 Indicating whether returning payload data is
- * base64 encoded
+ * @property {String} format Indicating how the data was converted after being
+ *  received from gpgme.
+ *      'ascii': Data was ascii-encoded and no further processed
+ *      'string': Data was decoded into an utf-8 string,
+ *      'base64': Data was not processed and is a base64 string
+ *      'uint8': Data was turned into a Uint8Array
  */
 
 /**