Configuring SSH keys

To configure and set up SSH keys for your GitHub account, follow these steps:

1. Check whether you already have an ssh key pair.
2. Open Git Bash and enter ls -al ~/.ssh to see whether existing SSH keys are present:

$ ls -al ~/.ssh  

3. The public key consists of the .pub extension. Create a new key pair (skip this step if you already have a key pair).
4. Open Git Bash and paste in the following text, substituting your GitHub email address for the one shown:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C your_email@example.com  

5. When you're prompted to Enter a file in which to save the key, press the Enter button to accept the default file location mentioned:

6. When prompted, type a secure passphrase (recommended), or press Enter to continue without a passphrase:

7. The entire setup will look as shown in the following screenshot:

8. Add the newly created SSH keys into ssh-agent; for that, ensure ssh-agent is running:

$ eval $(ssh-agent -s)  

9. Add the newly created private key to ssh-agent.
10. If you created your key with a different name, or if you are adding an existing key that has a different name, replace id_rsa in the command with the name of your private key file:

11. To add SSH keys to your GitHub account, download/copy the public key from ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

12. In the upper-right corner of the GitHub page, click your profile photo, and then click Settings:

13. In the Personal settings sidebar, click on SSH and GPG keys, and then select New SSH key:

14. Give a meaningful name to your key in the Title field and paste your key into the Key field. Click on Add SSH key:

15. When prompted, type your GitHub password.
16. The newly added SSH keys will look like this:

Great, so now you have successfully added SSH keys to your GitHub account!