Blog Post

Changing Git Credentials in Windows

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tl;dr For Windows when you need a different account.

I had to work with a new GitHub account recently and needed to add a separate account. I worked through that process and managed to get things to work with a Personal Access Token (PAT). Since I have 2FA (2 Factor Authentication) on my GitHub account, my user/password doesn’t ever work in the command line.

Once I was done, I wanted to change back. I had cloned a new repo, made a couple changes, and then when I went to push, I got:

2019-08-08 16_38_19-cmd

sjonesdkranch is the wrong account. I want to use my way0utwest account, but despite entering a new PAT, it wouldn’t save. Since I use SQL Source Control, this was a pain as the terminal access isn’t there. I googled around and eventually realized that my generic git credentials are stored in the Windows Credential Manager, not the Git config files.

This is in the Control Panel –> User Accounts –> Credential Manager (shown here)

2019-08-08 16_40_35-Credential Manager

I first went to the Web Credentials, as I saw two https://www.github.com entries. This was incorrect, because I don’t want the web, I want the git:github.com entry, which is under the Windows Credentials section.

You can see I have a lot of Git stuff, but I want the GitHub.com one.

2019-08-08 16_41_33-Credential Manager

I expanded this down and then clicked Edit.

2019-08-08 16_42_13-Credential Manager

This had been created by the PAT I’d entered awhile ago. I had saved the one I generated today in my password manager and entered it in this dialog.

2019-08-08 16_42_45-Edit Generic Credential

I saved it and my git push worked, both from the CLI and SQL Source Control.

2019-08-08 16_43_39-cmd

Good reminder. Windows, especially Win10, has started to save and use credentials in new ways and lots of software is integrating with it in those ways.

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