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How to use Mac OS X Keychain with SSH keys?

Fresh3 days ago
Mar 15, 2026193911 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I understand that since Mac OS X Leopard the Keychain has supported storing SSH keys. Could someone please explain how this feature is supposed to work. I have some RSA keys that I've generated stored in my ~/.ssh directory for accessing various servers. I don't have passphrases set on those keys. Currently in order to log in to those servers I use the following commands in the Terminal: (I've written some Bash functions to make this easier.) Is there a better way to do this using the Keychain?

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Fix for: How to use Mac OS X Keychain with SSH keys?

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As of the Leopard release of OS X, ssh-agent is more tightly integrated with Keychain. It is possible to store the passphrases of all of your SSH keys securely in Keychain, from which ssh-agent will read them on startup. The bottom line is that it is simple to secure your keys with passphrases, but never have to type the passphrase to use them! Here is how: Add the pass phrase to each ssh key to keychain: (option -k loads plain private keys only, skips certificates) (note that's a capital K) Wh…

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