Gitfox
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SSH Remotes

If you use SSH for authentication, Gitfox works like git from the command line without extra configuration.

Service accounts are only used for HTTPS authentication, not SSH.

Storing passphrases in Gitfox

Gitfox can store your passphrase for you. If your private key has a passphrase set, Gitfox will ask you to enter the password.

The passphrase is stored with your Gitfox credentials and is shown in Gitfox Settings → Accounts & Credentials under Private Key Passphrases.

Gitfox cannot detect whether the passphrase is valid before Git attempts the connection. If you saved the wrong passphrase, the connection will fail. Remove the matching private key passphrase from Gitfox Settings → Accounts & Credentials and try again; Gitfox will ask for the passphrase again and save the new value.

Configuring ssh-agent

You can also tell your ssh-agent to store the password in your keychain without requiring password entry on connection. To do that, add the following lines to your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host *
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes

This configures all hosts to store your passphrases in your keychain. If you only want to store it for a single host, use a host-specific entry:

Host example.com
IdentityFile path/to/private_key
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes

For ssh-agent to remember your passphrase, add your private key to the ssh-agent once and enter the passphrase for it.

ssh-add --apple-use-keychain path/to/private_key

Using multiple SSH keys

If your setup requires multiple SSH keys, update your ~/.ssh/config accordingly.

This example configures two separate SSH keys for a private and work account:

Host private.github.com
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_private

Host work.github.com
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work

For Gitfox to pick up the correct SSH key, change your remote URL to the appropriate host: