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I am on a Windows 10 system and am trying to add my credentials to Git in Git Bash. I cannot find a way to store my password.

I checked GitHub's documentation, which said just to enter the line git config --global credential.helper wincred, but that didn't seem to make sense, as there's not prompt to enter a password. I checked Git's documentation, which said to use command git credential-store --file ~/git.store store and fill in all prompts. The bash emulator wasn't able to read the credentials.

Finally, I tried to add my password like I added my email, via git config --global user.password "5ecre7" but after running a sample git clone on a repository I made it responded that I didn't have the access rights. Is there a way to fix this?

Peter Mortensen
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PJ Tikalsky
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8 Answers8

114

Ideally, you should enter:

git config --global credential.helper manager-core

This is from the Microsoft multi-platform credential manager GCM.

Then your password (or rather a token is used nowadays) would be stored in the Windows Credential Manager.
See more at "Unable to change git account".

On the first push, a popup will appear asking for your credentials (username/password) for the target server (for instance github.com)

If not, that might means your credentials were already stored.
If they are incorrect, a simple printf "protocol=https\nhost=github.com\nusername=xxx"| git-credential-manager-core erase will remove them (on Windows, Linux or Mac)

With Git 2.29 (Q4 2020), the parser in the receiving end of the credential protocol is loosen to allow credential helper to terminate lines with CRLF line ending, as well as LF line ending.

See commit 356c473 (03 Oct 2020) by Nikita Leonov (nyckyta).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 542b3c2, 05 Oct 2020)

credential: treat CR/LF as line endings in the credential protocol

Signed-off-by: Nikita Leonov
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin

This fix makes using Git credentials more friendly to Windows users: it allows a credential helper to communicate using CR/LF line endings ("DOS line endings" commonly found on Windows) instead of LF-only line endings ("Unix line endings").

Note that this changes the behavior a bit: if a credential helper produces, say, a password with a trailing Carriage Return character, that will now be culled even when the rest of the lines end only in Line Feed characters, indicating that the Carriage Return was not meant to be part of the line ending.

In practice, it seems very unlikely that something like this happens. Passwords usually need to consist of non-control characters, URLs need to have special characters URL-encoded, and user names, well, are names.

However, it does help on Windows, where CR/LF line endings are common: as unrecognized commands are simply ignored by the credential machinery, even a command like quit\r (which is clearly intended to abort) would simply be ignored (silently) by Git.

So let's change the credential machinery to accept both CR/LF and LF line endings.

While we do this for the credential helper protocol, we do not adjust git credential-cache--daemon(man) (which won't work on Windows, anyway, because it requires Unix sockets) nor git credential-store(man) (which writes the file ~/.git-credentials which we consider an implementation detail that should be opaque to the user, read: we do expect users not to edit this file manually).

Pavol Krajkovič
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VonC
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    For some reason the command to remove the credentials hung up for me. I found the credentials at Control Panel -> Credential Manager -> Windows Credentials -> Generic Credentials and removed them. – JACH Sep 21 '20 at 14:51
  • @JACH That will work indeed. As seen in https://stackoverflow.com/a/39608906/6309, or in command-line: https://stackoverflow.com/a/48415708/6309 – VonC Sep 21 '20 at 14:55
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    "git: 'credential-manager-core' is not a git command. See 'git --help'." – Enrico Apr 19 '21 at 07:27
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    @Enrico You need a recent Git for Windows (https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/releases) for `credential-manager-core` to be recognized. Or you need to install https://github.com/microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-Core separately on Linux/Mac. – VonC Apr 19 '21 at 07:30
  • run this in git bash git remote set-url origin https://anil.saripiralla%40gmail.com@github.com/anilsakr/az-serverless-nodejs – AnilS May 29 '23 at 14:33
  • @AnilS True, I mentioned [percent-encoding before](https://stackoverflow.com/a/6172831/6309). – VonC May 29 '23 at 14:40
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sorry, nothing worked for me (using msys git 2.33.0), here is my solution:

$ git config --global credential.helper store

go to some source directory

$ git add . && git commit -m "some commit" && git push origin master
Username for 'https://github.com': <type user name here>
Password for 'https://<typed user name>@github.com': <type generated token here>
sailfish009
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8

I tried many things but the Windows Credentials did not added credential for Git. Then I did the following simple action and it resolved my issue.

  • I removed the related credentials from the Windows Credentials Manager.
  • Then I opened the Git Bash from the project folder.
  • Then wrote "git fetch origin" command.
  • Git Bash first asked for the username and then for the password.

Then I checked the Windows Credentials Manager... Voilaaaa ! It now shows a credential like "git:http://username@address"

I tried to add somethings like "[credential] helper = manager/wincred" things in the config file but after this solution no need for that part, I deleted that [credential] section. Some says that this may be because of your git server is not using https. If it is using https may be you can find different solutions. I still have a goofy like smile on my face

Gultekin
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In windows Git's credential.store plugin which store the credentials in CredentialManager utility is named manager.

In order to set it as credential store for git(if not already set) use below command. This will set the CredentialManager as the git credential store

git config --global credential.store manager

you can verify the same using below(it will give result as manager)

git config credential.helper
GPuri
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  • These appear to be 2 different settings. Should it be `credential.store` or `credential.helper`? – Kidquick Nov 18 '22 at 13:35
  • git config --global credential.store will set the credential.store as the global credential store to be used by git. It is already present in windows. git config credential.helper will give you the current settings. – GPuri Nov 20 '22 at 09:38
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I normally prefer to clone my Git repositories using SSH links. Here are my steps for Windows:

  • Generate a public/private key pair through PuTTYgen.
  • Add the public key to my GitHub account.

By doing this, I can easily clone my repositories without needing to use my GitHub account password.

Peter Mortensen
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Raza Mehdi
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2

I had a related problem using Windows 10 Pro and Git-2.23.0-64-bit. After I had to change my Gitlab password, fatal: Authentication failed for did occur when- and wherever I tried to push/ pull/... a rep. For me, the following worked out:

Remove git including the respective folders on C: and Install git anew without(!) enabling the Git Credential Manager option in the configuration steps

Afterwards, when I tried to push my rep., the credential manager asked for my credentials one time. Now everything is ok again.

user13775920
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Prior answers are probably out of date for GitHub but may be ok for other git repositories. You'll get an error like this:

remote: Support for password authentication was removed on August 13, 2021. Please use a personal access token instead.
remote: Please see https://github.blog/2020-12-15-token-authentication-requirements-for-git-operations/ for more information.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/username/repo.git/'

It's probably easier to use the GitHub application.

If you really want to use command line, first generate a token, instructions here: https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/creating-a-personal-access-token

Then you use the token instead of your password. This is painful because the token is a long string of digits that you can't easily memorise, so you'll be cutting and pasting from a password manager or something less secure.

So I recommend running the GitHub Desktop app which you can get from: https://desktop.github.com/

InnocentBystander
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0

No answer here currently gives the full process and in a Git runtime-agnostic way. I.e. a solution that will work no matter if you installed the Git Bash package or in an other way (via a more sensible way like with a package manager for instance).

Here is one:

# 1. Install Git Credential Manager (`git-credential-manager-core` has been renamed and is deprecated.), for instance with `scoop`:
scoop install git-credential-manager

# 2. Configure Git to use it

git config --global credential.helper manager
git config --global credential.useHttpPath true

And that's it, you can now authenticate via SSO with your Microsoft Office 365 account to the git remote, without having to enter a generated credential password from your git host every time.

adamency
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