GitHub: How to clone a repository with SSH

GitHub Docs: Connecting to GitHub with SSH

Item	Version
OS	MacOS sequoia 15.3.1
Git	2.49.0
OpenSSH	9.8p1

1. Generate SSH Key

# -t: key type, -C: comment, -f: file location, -N: passphrase
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_authentication -N ""

2. Add SSH Key to GitHub

2.1. Copy Public Key to Clipboard

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_authentication.pub | pbcopy # macOS

2.2. Open GitHub Settings

1. Go to GitHub Settings
2. Click New SSH key
3. Select Key type as Authentication Key and paste the public key to the Key field
4. Click Add SSH key

3. Set SSH Config

Open ~/.ssh/config file.

Then, add the following content to the file.

Host github-personal
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_authentication

You can set any name for the host. Additionally, you can set multiple github accounts on the same machine, if you add public keys for each github account.

Host github-personal
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_authentication

Host github-company
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_authentication

4. Test SSH Connection

ssh -T github-personal

5. Clone Repository with SSH

git clone github-personal:<your_username>/<your_repository>.git

Let’s examine the default settings of GitHub SSH. If you set SSH key as id_ed25519 which is default and not edited SSH config, you can clone repository with the following command.

git clone git@github.com:<your_username>/<your_repository>.git

And your remote repository name is origin, not github-personal.