How to make Powershell remember the SSH key passphrase.

MakePowerShellRememberSSHPassphrase.md

You should not use the Open SSH client that comes with Git for Windows. Instead, Windows 10 has its own implementation of Open SSH that is integrated with the system. To achieve this:

1. Start the ssh-agent from Windows Services:

• Type Services in the Start Menu or Win+R and then type services.msc to launch the Services window;
• Find the OpenSSH Authentication Agent in the list and double click on it;
• In the OpenSSH Authentication Agent Properties window that appears, choose Automatic from the Startup type: dropdown and click Start from Service status:. Make sure it now says Service status: Running.

2. Configure Git to use the Windows 10 implementation of OpenSSH by issuing the following command in Powershell:

git config --global core.sshCommand C:/Windows/System32/OpenSSH/ssh.exe

3. Configure SSH to automatically add the keys to the agent on startup by editing the config file found at $HOME\.ssh\config (full path - C:\Users\%YOUR_USERNAME%\.ssh\config), and add the following lines:

Host *
	AddKeysToAgent yes
	IdentitiesOnly yes

You can also add the following lines if you generated an SSH key with custom name or multiple SSH keys:

Host github.com
	HostName github.com
	User your_user_name
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/your_file_name

4. Add your SSH key to the ssh-agent by issuing the ssh-add command and entering your passphrase:

ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/your_file_name

5. Done! Now restart your Powershell and even Windows if necessary.

If this was useful, you can buy me a coffee here. Thank you!

@DJviolin Oh, nice! I didn't know you could do that. Thanks for the tip! But you still have to turn on OpenSSH Authentication Agent from Windows Services, as it's not turned on by default. And a config file is still required if you have multiple SSH keys of different types. I personally have different keys for each server or service.

Yes, sorry, I didn't mentoined it, all those steps are still neccessary. This is for edge cases where git still asking for passphrase.

For people who struggle with the ssh-add command, please follow this StackOverflow thread:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18683092/how-to-run-ssh-add-on-windows

TLDR: enable "OpenSSH Authentication Agent" and start it, to make ssh-add work.

For whatever reason, all this did not help me until I also put the public key file into ~/.ssh/. With only the private key, it continued to prompt me for the keyphrase. Still, thanks for the writeup!

WOW this was IT!!!

Thanks for this gist. Somehow this was the only working thing I could find. Even GitHub's documentation has a terrible guide that doesn't work.

@ThomasFrans I'm glad I could help! Yeah, I know, that's why I created this gist, I like things to work as smoothly as possible!

only thing that worked, thanks a ton

Thank you! @danieldogeanu and @XanderXAJ This helped me! It's working!

In addition to the initial Gist, I also had to do this:

# In Admin PowerShell
Get-Service ssh-agent | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Start-Service ssh-agent

For whatever reason, all this did not help me until I also put the public key file into ~/.ssh/. With only the private key, it continued to prompt me for the keyphrase. Still, thanks for the writeup!

WOW this was IT!!!

O my! It took me a year to figure this out! Why is this not common knowledge!