Configuring Multiple GitHub Accounts in Windows Using SSH

Introduction

It is common for a developer to have at least two GitHub accounts, one personal and one for work. Here is a straightforward way to make both work side by side on Windows.

First navigate to:

C:\Users\<user-name>\.ssh

Check whether you already have SSH keys there. If you do not, the folder looks like this:

.ssh
├── known_hosts
└── known_hosts.old

Now let us generate two SSH keys.

Account type	GitHub username	Email
Personal	naveen	naveen@gmail.com
Work	codeandcloud	naveen@codeand.cloud

This example uses Ed25519 keys.

Generating SSH keys

Open Git Bash and run:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "naveen@gmail.com"

You will be prompted for:

The file to save the key
A passphrase

In this example, the personal key is saved as id_personal and the work key as id_work.

~/.ssh$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "naveen@gmail.com"
Generating public/private ed25519 key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/c/Users/____/.ssh/id_ed25519): id_personal
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in id_personal
Your public key has been saved in id_personal.pub

Create the work key in the same way:

~/.ssh$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "naveen@codeand.cloud"
Generating public/private ed25519 key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/c/Users/____/.ssh/id_ed25519): id_work
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in id_work
Your public key has been saved in id_work.pub

Adding SSH keys to the agent

Start the SSH agent:

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

Then add the identities:

ssh-add id_personal
ssh-add id_work

The terminal will look like this:

~/.ssh$ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
Agent pid 3350

~/.ssh$ ssh-add id_personal
Identity added: id_personal (naveen@gmail.com)

~/.ssh$ ssh-add id_work
Identity added: id_work (naveen@codeand.cloud)

Adding the SSH keys to GitHub

Copy the public key:

cat id_personal.pub

Then go to GitHub and add the key in SSH and GPG keys.

Configuring SSH for multiple accounts

Create a config file in .ssh and save:

# Personal GitHub
Host github-personal
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_personal

# Work GitHub
Host github-work
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_work

Testing the keys

ssh -T git@github-personal
ssh -T git@github-work

If everything works, GitHub will confirm that you authenticated successfully.

Using different accounts for different repositories

If you have a repository named hello-world in the codeandcloud account, clone it like this:

git clone git@github-work:codeandcloud/hello-world.git

The only difference is replacing git@github.com with the host alias you configured.

Happy coding.