How to use SSH with Git and ssh-agent on Windows

Photo by Georg Bommeli on Unsplash

I needed to run git natively in windows (no wsl) for a recent project. I use ssh certificates to authenticate with my git provider and it was difficult to get it all working as expected.

I didn’t want to use Git for Windows because it uses GitBash. I couldn’t use WSL because I wanted git to work on any terminal in windows. I also have pass phrases on all my ssh certificates so I needed ssh agent to avoid typing the passphrases all the time.

These are the steps I had to research to use Git on Windows with ssh-agent.

Note: You must be an administrator to perform the required actions.

Open ssl on Windows

If you use Windows 10 or higher there is a built-in openssl instance. You can turn it on in the Optional Features settings pane.

Microsoft provide more instructions here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh/openssh_install_firstuse?tabs=gui

Follow the instructions to install it if you don’t have it.

A note on certificates

I’ll assume that you have ssh certificates available and any ssh aliases are set in the config file

The default location for the config file on windows is

$HOME\.ssh\config

You should create that file if you need ssh aliases. You can read more about this in my article on ssh for git accounts — https://www.darraghoriordan.com/2021/05/04/configure-multiple-github-accounts-one-computer/

Enabling Ssh agent

Open a powershell terminal as administrator and run the following to have ssh-agent available.

# Have ssh agent start automatically
Get-Service ssh-agent | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic

# Start ssh agent now
Start-Service ssh-agent

# Should work successfully
Get-Service ssh-agent

Configure git to use Windows ssh

# tell git to use ssh.exe
git config --global core.sshCommand "'C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh.exe'"

Load keys into ssh agent

Copy your keys into a folder that ssh-agent can access. Anywhere in the $HOME/.ssh should be ok.

Then add the key to ssh-agent. You will be prompted for a password and ssh agent will remember it for you.

ssh-add "C:\Users\darragh\.ssh\authorized_keys\darraghPersonalGithub" 

Originally published at https://www.darraghoriordan.com.