Git keeps prompting me for a password

I've been using Git for a while now, but the constant requests for a password are starting to drive me up the wall.

I'm using Mac OS X and GitHub, and I set up Git and my SSH keys as instructed by GitHub's Set Up Git page.

I've also added the github SSH key to my Mac OS X keychain, as mentioned on GitHub's SSH key passphrases page. My public key is registered with Git.

Nevertheless, every time I try to Git pull, I have to enter my username and password. Is there something other than an SSH key that I need to set up for this?

I think you may have the wrong Git repository URL.

Open .git/config and find the [remote "origin"] section. Make sure you're using the SSH one:

ssh://[email protected]/username/repo.git

You can see the SSH URL in the main page of your repository if you click Clone or download and choose ssh.

And NOT the https or git one:

https://github.com/username/repo.git
git://github.com/username/repo.git

You can now validate with just the SSH key instead of the username and password.

If Git complains that 'origin' has already been added, open the .config file and edit the url = "..." part after [remote origin] as url = ssh://github/username/repo.git

The same goes for other services. Make sure the address looks like: protocol://something@url

E.g. .git/config for Azure DevOps:

[remote "origin"]
    url = https://[email protected]/mystore/myproject/
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Configuring credential.helper

On OS X (now macOS), run this in Terminal:

git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain

It enables Git to use file Keychain.app to store username and password and to retrieve the passphrase to your private SSH key from the keychain.

For Windows use:

git config --global credential.helper wincred

For Linux use:

git config --global credential.helper cache // If you want to cache the credentials for some time (default 15 minutes)

OR

git config --global credential.helper store // if you want to store the credentials for ever (considered unsafe)

Note: The first method will cache the credentials in memory, whereas the second will store them in ~/.git-credentials in plain text format.

Check here for more info about Linux method.
Check here for more info about all three.

Troubleshooting

If the Git credential helper is configured correctly macOS saves the passphrase in the keychain. Sometimes the connection between SSH and the passphrases stored in the keychain can break. Run ssh-add -K or ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa to add the key to keychain again.

macOS v10.12 (Sierra) changes to ssh

For macOS v10.12 (Sierra), ssh-add -K needs to be run after every reboot. To avoid this, create ~/.ssh/config with this content.

Host *
    AddKeysToAgent yes
    UseKeychain yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

From the ssh_config man page on 10.12.2:

UseKeychain

On macOS, specifies whether the system should search for passphrases in the user's keychain when attempting to use a particular key. When the passphrase is provided by the user, this option also specifies whether the passphrase should be stored into the keychain once it has been verified to be correct. The argument must be 'yes' or 'no'. The default is 'no'.

Apple has added Technote 2449 which explains what happened.

Prior to macOS Sierra, ssh would present a dialog asking for your passphrase and would offer the option to store it into the keychain. This UI was deprecated some time ago and has been removed.

This happened to me when I upgraded to macOS v10.12 (Sierra). Looks like the SSH agent got cleared upon upgrade.

$ ssh-add -L
The agent has no identities.

Simply running ssh-add located my existing identity. I entered the password and was good to go again.

As others have said, you can install a password cache helper. I mostly just wanted to post the link for other platforms, and not just Mac. I'm running a Linux server and this was helpful: Caching your GitHub password in Git

For Mac:

git credential-osxkeychain

Windows:

git config --global credential.helper wincred

Linux:

git config --global credential.helper cache
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600'
# Set the cache to timeout after 1 hour (setting is in seconds)