Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account - GitHub Docs (original) (raw)
To configure your account on GitHub.com to use your new (or existing) SSH key, you'll also need to add the key to your account.
About addition of SSH keys to your account
You can access and write data in repositories on GitHub using SSH (Secure Shell Protocol). When you connect via SSH, you authenticate using a private key file on your local machine. For more information, see About SSH.
You can also use SSH to sign commits and tags. For more information about commit signing, see About commit signature verification.
After you generate an SSH key pair, you must add the public key to GitHub.com to enable SSH access for your account.
Prerequisites
Before adding a new SSH key to your account on GitHub.com, complete the following steps.
- Check for existing SSH keys. For more information, see Checking for existing SSH keys.
- Generate a new SSH key and add it to your machine's SSH agent. For more information, see Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent.
Adding a new SSH key to your account
You can add an SSH key and use it for authentication, or commit signing, or both. If you want to use the same SSH key for both authentication and signing, you need to upload it twice.
After adding a new SSH authentication key to your account on GitHub.com, you can reconfigure any local repositories to use SSH. For more information, see Managing remote repositories.
Note
GitHub improved security by dropping older, insecure key types on March 15, 2022.
As of that date, DSA keys (ssh-dss) are no longer supported. You cannot add new DSA keys to your personal account on GitHub.
RSA keys (ssh-rsa) with a valid_after before November 2, 2021 may continue to use any signature algorithm. RSA keys generated after that date must use a SHA-2 signature algorithm. Some older clients may need to be upgraded in order to use SHA-2 signatures.