Git Credential Manager (GCM) is a secure Git credential helper built on .NET that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It aims to provide a consistent and secure authentication experience, including multi-factor auth, to every major source control hosting service and platform.
GCM supports (in alphabetical order) Azure DevOps, Azure DevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server), Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab. Compare to Git's built-in credential helpers (Windows: wincred, macOS: osxkeychain, Linux: gnome-keyring/libsecret), which provide single-factor authentication support for username/password only.
GCM replaces both the .NET Framework-based Git Credential Manager for Windows and the Java-based Git Credential Manager for Mac and Linux.
See the installation instructions for the current version of GCM for install options for your operating system.
Git Credential Manager is currently available for Windows, macOS, and Linux and works with HTTP(S) remotes.
You can still use Git with SSH - see the specific documentation for your host on how to set up SSH: Azure DevOps, GitHub, Bitbucket
| Feature | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Installer/uninstaller | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Secure platform credential storage (see more) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Entra authentication with broker support | opt-in | ✗ | ✗ |
| Azure DevOps authentication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitHub & GHES authentication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bitbucket Cloud & DC authentication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitLab authentication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Windows Integrated Authentication (NTLM/Kerberos) | ✓ | N/A | N/A |
| Generic OAuth authentication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Basic HTTP authentication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Network proxies | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
amd64 support |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
x86 support |
✓ | N/A | ✗ |
arm64 support |
best effort | ✓ | ✓ |
armhf support |
N/A | N/A | ✓ |
We aim to support the broadest set of operating systems and distributions, within reason. We aim to target and update to the latest current .NET LTS version as they become generally available.
GCM supports Windows 10 and later, including Windows Server 2016 and later. This is the same support matrix as the .NET runtime on Windows.
See detailed WSL information here.
As of GCM version 3.x, Windows 7 and Windows 8.x are no longer supported. We continue to provide minimal, security-only support for GCM 2.9.x on Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, but we recommend upgrading to a supported version of Windows.
The maint-v2 and releases/v2 branches are
maintained to allow for security patches and releases for GCM v2.x for Windows 7
and Windows 8.x only. These branches will not receive new features.
GCM supports macOS 14 and later. This is the same support matrix as the .NET runtime on macOS.
GCM provides support only for the Linux distributions that are officially supported by dotnet.
Git Credential Manager tries to be compatible with the broadest set of Git versions (within reason). However there are some known problematic releases of Git that are not compatible.
-
Git 1.x
The initial major version of Git is not supported or tested with GCM.
-
Git 2.26.2
This version of Git introduced a breaking change with parsing credential configuration that GCM relies on. This issue was fixed in commit
12294990of the Git project, and released in Git 2.27.0.
Once it's installed and configured, Git Credential Manager is called implicitly
by Git. You don't have to do anything special, and GCM isn't intended to be
called directly by the user. For example, when pushing (git push) to
Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, or GitHub, a
window will automatically open and walk you through the sign-in process.
This process will look slightly different for each Git host, and even in some cases, whether you've connected to an on-premises or cloud-hosted Git host. Later Git commands in the same repository will re-use existing credentials or tokens that GCM has stored for as long as they're valid.
Read full command line usage here.
See detailed information here.
See the documentation index for links to additional resources.
- (None at this time)
Curious about what's coming next in the GCM project? Take a look at the project roadmap! You can find more details about the construction of the roadmap and how to interpret it here.
This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. See the contributing guide to get started.
This project follows GitHub's Open Source Code of Conduct.
We're MIT licensed. When using GitHub logos, please be sure to follow the GitHub logo guidelines.