Recently after reformatting my computer I’ve had to input my username/password every time I try to do something with GitHub via the command line. Today I took the time to finally figure out what was going on.

Turns out that I had a newer version of git that behaves a little differently. Today I learned that you need to configure git to use this so it will stop nagging you.

The Symptoms

1. You are asked for your username and password when you interact with an HTTPS GitHub remote.
2. It does not ask for your username and password when you interact with an SSH GitHub remote.
3. You’re git version is 1.7.10 or newer. Run git --version to find out which version you have.

The Cure

You need to configure git to cache your username and password with the osxkeychain credential helper.

GitHub’s help pages describe how to do this here