How to save username and password in Git

Question

I want to use a push and pull automatically in GitExtension  without entering my user and password in a prompt  every time  So how can I save my credentials in git

User · Answer

After reading the thread in full and experimenting with most of the answers to this question, I eventually found the procedure that works for me. I want to share it in case someone has to deal with a complex use case but still do not want to go through the full thread and the gitcredentials, gitcredentials-store etc. man pages, as I did.

Find below the procedure I suggest IF you (like me) have to deal with several repositories from several providers (GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.) using several different username / password combinations. If you instead have only a single account to work with, then you might be better off employing the git config --global credential.helper store or git config --global user.name "your username" etc. solutions that have been very well explained in previous answers.

My solution:

unset global credentials helper, in case some former experimentation gets in the way :)

> git config --global --unset credentials.helper

move to the root directory of your repo and disable the local credential helper (if needed)

> cd /path/to/my/repo

> git config --unset credential.helper

create a file to store your repo's credentials into

> git config credential.helper 'store --file ~/.git_repo_credentials'

Note: this command creates a new file named ".git_repo_credentials" into your home directory, to which Git stores your credentials. If you do not specify a file name, Git uses the default ".git_credentials". In this case simply issuing the following command will do:

> git config credential.helper store

set your username

git config credential.*.username my_user_name

Note: using "*" is usually ok if your repositories are from the same provider (e.g. GitLab). If instead your repositories are hosted by different providers then I suggest to explicitly set the link to the provider for every repository, like in the following example (for GitLab):

git config credential.https://gitlab.com.username my_user_name

At this point if you issue a command requiring your credentials (e.g. git pull) you will be asked for the password corresponding to "my_user_name". This is only required once because git stores the credentials to ".git_repo_credentials" and automatically uses the same data at subsequent accesses.

User · Answer

If you are using the Git Credential Manager on Windows    git config -l should show  credential helper manager  However  if you are not getting prompted for a credential then follow these steps   Open Control Panel from the Start menu Select User Accounts Select Manage your credentials in the left hand menu Delete any credentials related to Git or GitHub  Also ensure you have not set HTTP PROXY  HTTPS PROXY  NO PROXY environmental variables if you have proxy and your Git server is on the internal network  You can also test Git fetch push pull using git-gui which links to credential manager binaries in C  Users  lt username gt  AppData Local Programs Git mingw64 libexec git-core

User · Answer

None of the answers above worked for me  I kept getting the following every time I wanted to fetch or pull   Enter passphrase for key   Users myusername  ssh id rsa      For Macs  I was able to stop it from asking my passphrase by    Open config by running  vi    ssh config Added the following  UseKeychain yes Saved and quit  Press Esc  then enter  wq      For Windows  I was able to get it to work using the info in this stackexchange  https   unix stackexchange com a 12201 348665

User · Answer

For global setting  open the terminal  from any where  run the following     git config --global user name  your username    git config --global user password  your password    By that  any local git repo that you have on your machine will use that information   You can individually config for each repo by doing    open terminal at the repo folder  run the following   git config user name  your username  git config user password  your password     It affects only that folder  because your configuration is local

User · Answer

Store username and password in  git-credentials   git-credentials is where your username and password access token  is stored when you run git config --global credential helper store  which is what other answers suggest  and then type in your username and password or access token   https     username or access token    password or access token  github com   So  in order to save the username and password access token    git config    -global credential helper store echo    https     username    password or access token  github com     gt     git-credentials   This is very useful for github robot  e g  to solve Chain automated builds in the same docker repository by having rules for different branch and then trigger it by pushing to it in post push hooker in docker hub   An example of this can be seen here in stackoverflow

User · Answer

You will be more secure if you use SSH authentication than username password authentication    If you are using a Mac  SSH client authentication is integrated into the MacOS keychain  Once you have created an SSH key  type into your terminal   ssh-add -K    ssh id rsa   This will add the SSH private key to the MacOS keychain  The git client will use ssh when it connects to the remote server  As long as you have registered your ssh public key with the server  you will be fine

User · Answer

From the comment by rifrol  on Linux Ubuntu  from this answer  here s how in Ubuntu   sudo apt-get install libsecret-1-0 libsecret-1-dev cd  usr share doc git contrib credential libsecret sudo make git config --global credential helper  usr share doc git contrib credential libsecret git-credential-libsecret   Some other distro s provide the binary so you don t have to build it   In OS X it typically comes  built  with a default module of  osxkeychain  so you get it for free

User · Answer

You can use the git config to enable credentials storage in git   git config --global credential helper store   When running this command  the first time you pull or push from the remote repository  you ll get asked about the username and password   Afterwards  for consequent communications with the remote repository you don t have to provide the username and password   The storage format is a  git-credentials file  stored in plaintext   Also  you can use other helpers for the git config credential helper  namely memory cache   git config credential helper cache  lt timeout gt    which takes an optional timeout parameter   determining for how long the credentials will be kept in memory  Using the helper  the credentials will never touch the disk and will be erased after the specified timeout  The default value is 900 seconds  15 minutes      WARNING   If you use this method  your git account passwords will be saved in plaintext format  in the global  gitconfig file  e g in linux it will be  home  username   gitconfig  If this is undesirable to you  use an ssh key for your accounts instead

User · Answer

Check official git documentation      If you use the SSH transport for connecting to remotes  it   s possible   for you to have a key without a passphrase  which allows you to   securely transfer data without typing in your username and password    However  this isn   t possible with the HTTP protocols     every   connection needs a username and password  This gets even harder for   systems with two-factor authentication  where the token you use for a   password is randomly generated and unpronounceable       Fortunately  Git has a credentials system that can help with this  Git   has a few options provided in the box          The default is not to cache at all  Every connection will prompt you   for your username and password    The    cache    mode keeps credentials in memory for a certain period of   time  None of the passwords are ever stored on disk  and they are   purged from the cache after 15 minutes    The    store    mode saves the credentials to a plain-text file on disk    and they never expire  This means that until you change your password   for the Git host  you won   t ever have to type in your credentials   again  The downside of this approach is that your passwords are stored   in cleartext in a plain file in your home directory    If you   re using a Mac  Git comes with an    osxkeychain    mode  which   caches credentials in the secure keychain that   s attached to your   system account  This method stores the credentials on disk  and they   never expire  but they   re encrypted with the same system that stores   HTTPS certificates and Safari auto-fills    If you   re using Windows  you can install a helper called    Git   Credential Manager for Windows     This is similar to the    osxkeychain      helper described above  but uses the Windows Credential Store to   control sensitive information  It can be found at   https   github com Microsoft Git-Credential-Manager-for-Windows          You can choose one of these methods by setting a Git configuration   value      git config --global credential helper cache    git config --global credential helper store   https   git-scm com book en v2 Git-Tools-Credential-Storage

User · Answer

I think it s safer to cache credentials  instead of store forever  git config --global credential helper  cache --timeout 10800   now you can enter your username and password git pull or       and keep using git for next 3 hours  nice and safe  Timeout is in seconds 3 hours in the example

User · Answer

Apart from editing the    gitconfig file  that you can do if you ask   git config --local --edit   or  git config --global --edit   Note to always use single quotes   git config --local user name  your username  git config --local user password  your password    or  git config --global user name  your username  git config --global user password  your password    Your username and password may use some characters that would break your password if you use double quotes   --local or --global means configuration params are saved for the project or for the os user

User · Answer

just use  git config --global credential helper store   and do the git pull  it will ask for username and password  from now on it will not provide any prompt for username and password it will store the details

User · Answer

After going over dozens of SO posts  blogs  etc  I tried out every method  and this is what I came up with  It covers EVERYTHING   The Vanilla DevOps Git Credentials  amp  Private Packages Cheatsheet  These are all the ways and tools by which you can securely authenticate git to clone a repository without an interactive password prompt    SSH Public Keys   SSH ASKPASS  API Access Tokens   GIT ASKPASS  gitconfig insteadOf  gitconfig  credential   git-credentials  netrc  Private Packages  for Free    node   npm package json python   pip   eggs requirements txt ruby gems Gemfile golang go mod    The Silver Bullet  Want Just Works     This is the magic silver bullet   Get your Access Token  see the section in the cheatsheet if you need the Github or Gitea instructions for that  and set it in an environment variable  both for local dev and deployment    MY GIT TOKEN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   For Github  copy and run these lines verbatim   git config --global url  https   api  MY GIT TOKEN github com   insteadOf  https   github com   git config --global url  https   ssh  MY GIT TOKEN github com   insteadOf  ssh   git github com   git config --global url  https   git  MY GIT TOKEN github com   insteadOf  git github com     Congrats  now any automated tool cloning git repositories won t be obstructed by a password prompt  whether using https or either style of ssh url   Not using Github   For other platforms  Gitea  Github  Bitbucket   just change the URL  Don t change the usernames  although arbitrary  they re needed for distinct config entries    Compatibility  This works locally in MacOS  Linux  Windows  in Bash   Docker  CircleCI  Heroku  Akkeris  etc   More Info  See the   gitconfig insteadOf  section of the cheatsheet   Security  See the  Security  section of the cheatsheet

User · Answer

For windows users look at the  gitconfig file and check what has been configured for the credential helper if you have the following     credential  quot helperselector quot   selected   wincred you ll find the credentials in the Windows Credential Manager   There you can edit the credential  EDIT  Wincred has been deprecated  see    https   github com git-for-windows git-sdk-64 tree main mingw64 doc git-credential-manager So alternatively you may want to reconfigure git to use the built-in GIT credential manager    git config --global credential helper manager

User · Answer

Attention  This method saves the credentials in plaintext on your PC s disk  Everyone on your computer can access it  e g  malicious NPM modules  Run git config --global credential helper store  then git pull  provide a username and password and those details will then be remembered later  The credentials are stored in a file on the disk  with the disk permissions of  quot just user readable writable quot  but still in plaintext  If you want to change the password later git pull  Will fail  because the password is incorrect  git then removes the offending user password from the    git-credentials file  so now re-run git pull  to provide a new password so it works as earlier

User · Answer

Just put your credentials in the Url like this      https   Username Password github com myRepoDir myRepo git   You may store it like this      git remote add myrepo https   Userna         example to use it      git push myrepo master     Now that is to List the url aliases   git remote -v     and that the command to delete one of them   git remote rm myrepo

User · Answer

Turn on the credential helper so that Git will save your password in memory for some time   In Terminal  enter the following     Set git to use the credential memory cache git config --global credential helper cache   By default  Git will cache your password for 15 minutes   To change the default password cache timeout  enter the following     Set the cache to timeout after 1 hour  setting is in seconds  git config --global credential helper  cache --timeout 3600    From GitHub Help

User · Answer

You can edit the    gitconfig file to store your credentials  sudo nano    gitconfig   Which should already have   user          email   your email com         user   gitUSER   You should add at the bottom of this file    credential          helper   store   The reason I recommend this option is cause it is global and if at any point you need to remove the option you know where to go and change it   ONLY USE THIS OPTION IN YOU PERSONAL COMPUTER   Then when you pull   clone  enter you git password  in general  the password will be saved in    git-credentials in the format  https   GITUSER GITPASSWORD DOMAIN XXX   WHERE DOMAIN XXX COULD BE GITHUB COM   BITBUCKET ORG   OTHER  See Docs  Restart your terminal

User · Answer

You can use git-credential-store to store your passwords unencrypted on the disk  protected only by the permissions of the file system   Example    git config credential helper store   git push http   example com repo git Username   lt type your username gt  Password   lt type your password gt    several days later    git push http   example com repo git  your credentials are used automatically    You can check the credentials stored in the file    git-credentials  For more info visit  git-credential-store - Helper to store credentials on disk

User · Answer

In that case you need git credential helper to tell git to remember your GitHub password and username by using following command line    git config --global credential helper wincred    and if you are using repo using SSH key then you need SSH key to authenticate

User · Answer

Recommended and Secure Method  SSH  Create an ssh Github key  Go to github com -  Settings -  SSH and GPG keys -  New SSH Key  Now save your private key to your computer   Then  if the private key is saved as id rsa in the    ssh  directory  we add it for authentication as such   ssh-add -K    ssh id rsa    A More Secure Method  Caching  We can use git-credential-store to cache our username and password for a time period  Simply enter the following in your CLI  terminal or command prompt    git config --global credential helper cache   You can also set the timeout period  in seconds  as such   git config --global credential helper  cache --timeout 3600     An Even Less Secure Method  Git-credential-store may also be used  but saves passwords in plain text file on your disk as such   git config credential helper store    Outdated Answer - Quick and Insecure  This is an insecure method of storing your password in plain text  If someone gains control of your computer  your password will be exposed    You can set your username and password like this   git config --global user name  your username   git config --global user password  your password

[git] How to save username and password in Git?

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