[git] How do I get git to default to ssh and not https for new repositories

These days when I create a new repository on GitHub on the setup page I get:

git remote add origin https://github.com/nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git
git push -u origin master

And whenever I have to push a commit I need to enter my GitHub username and password.

I can manually change that to

[email protected]:nikhilbhardwaj/abc.git

in the .git/config. I find this quite irritating - is there some way I can configure git to use SSH by default?

SSH File

~/.ssh/config file
Host *
    StrictHostKeyChecking no
    UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
    LogLevel QUIET
    ConnectTimeout=10
Host github.com
        User git
        AddKeystoAgent yes
        UseKeychain yes
        Identityfile ~/github_rsa

Edit reponame/.git/config

[remote "origin"]
        url = [email protected]:username/repo.git

You may have accidentally cloned the repository in https instead of ssh. I've made this mistake numerous times on github. Make sure that you copy the ssh link in the first place when cloning, instead of the https link.

The response provided by Trevor is correct.

But here is what you can directly add in your .gitconfig:

# Enforce SSH
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
  insteadOf = https://github.com/
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
  insteadOf = https://gitlab.com/
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
  insteadOf = https://bitbucket.org/

You need to clone in ssh not in https.

For that you need to set your ssh keys. I have prepared this little script that automates this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
email="$1"
hostname="$2"
hostalias="$hostname"
keypath="$HOME/.ssh/${hostname}_rsa"
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C $email -f $keypath
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
cat >> ~/.ssh/config <<EOF
Host $hostalias
        Hostname $hostname *.$hostname
        User git
    IdentitiesOnly yes
        IdentityFile $keypath
EOF
fi

and run it like

bash script.sh [email protected] github.com

Change your remote url

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:user/foo.git

Add content of ~/.ssh/github.com_rsa.pub to your ssh keys on github.com

Check connection

ssh -T [email protected]

• GitHub

  git config --global url.ssh://[email protected]/.insteadOf https://github.com/
  

• BitBucket

  git config --global url.ssh://[email protected]/.insteadOf https://bitbucket.org/
  

That tells git to always use SSH instead of HTTPS when connecting to GitHub/BitBucket, so you'll authenticate by certificate by default, instead of being prompted for a password.