Save SSH Private Key in Keychain so you don't need to type it anymore on MacOS

In the previous post I talk about setting up SSH to connect to Github as a better method than HTTPS to clone Github repository. However, it still requires me to type in my SSH passphrase for every connection:

yyl@home dir % ssh -T [email protected]
Enter passphrase for key '/Users/yyl/.ssh/id_ed25519':    <---- ask for passphrase every time!
Hi yyl! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

I’d like to not need to type it every time. Turns out it is indeed possible MacOS! I followed this great instruction and it takes me 2 minutes to set it up (Github has the same instruction too although more buried in the SSH setup guide ). Once I have it set up, I no longer need to type the passphrase when connecting to Github or any host using SSH:

yyl@home dir % ls -al ~/.ssh    <---- command to see all my ssh keys
total 32
drwx------   6 yyl  staff   192 Mar 23 20:27 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 33 yyl  staff  1056 Mar 24 21:18 ..
-rw-------   1 yyl  staff   464 Mar 23 19:53 id_ed25519    <---- my private key
-rw-r--r--   1 yyl  staff    99 Mar 23 19:53 id_ed25519.pub
-rw-------   1 yyl  staff   828 Mar 23 20:27 known_hosts
-rw-r--r--   1 yyl  staff    92 Mar 23 15:30 known_hosts.old
yyl@home dir % ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 <---- command to add the private key to keychain
Enter passphrase for /Users/yyl/.ssh/id_ed25519:    <---- type the passphrase one last time
Identity added: /Users/yyl/.ssh/id_ed25519 ([email protected])
yyl@home dir % touch ~/.ssh/config    <---- command to create a new config file if not exist
yyl@home dir % vim ~/.ssh/config    <---- add the Host text from the link to the file
yyl@home dir % ssh -T [email protected]
Hi yyl! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.    <---- look ma, no passphrase!

That’s it!