Visual Studio Code always asking for git credentials

ddieppa picture ddieppa · Dec 21, 2015 · Viewed 237.8k times · Source

I started using Visual Studio Code, and I was trying to save my test project into GitHub, but Visual Studio Code is always asking for my GitHub credentials.

I have installed in my PC GitHub Desktop and also Git, I already ran:

 git config --global credential.helper wincred

but still Visual Studio Code is asking for the credentials.

Any help?

here is my .gitconfig file located in the user profile folfer:

    [filter "lfs"]
    clean = git-lfs clean %f
    smudge = git-lfs smudge %f
    required = true
[user]
    name = ddieppa
[user]
    email = [email protected]
[credential]
    helper = wincred

Here is the popup windows asking for the credentials:

enter image description here

I enter my GitHub credentials in the popup, but still getting this error in the Git output window in Visual Studio Code:

remote: Anonymous access to ddieppa/LineOfBizApp.git denied.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/ddieppa/LineOfBizApp.git/'

Answer

Davuz picture Davuz · Jan 6, 2016

Last updated: 05 March, 2019

After 98 upvotes, I think I need to give a true answer with the explanation.

Why does VS code ask for a password? Because VSCode runs the auto-fetch feature, while git server doesn't have any information to authorize your identity. It happens when:

  • Your git repo has https remote url. Yes! This kind of remote will absolutely ask you every time. No exceptions here! (You can do a temporary trick to cache the authorization as the solution below, but this is not recommended.)
  • Your git repo has ssl remote url, BUT you've not copied your ssh public key onto git server. Use ssh-keygen to generate your key and copy it to git server. Done! This solution also helps you never retype password on terminal again. See a good instruction by @Fnatical here for the answer.

The updated part at the end of this answer doesn't really help you at all. (It actually makes you stagnant in your workflow.) It only stops things happening in VSCode and moves these happenings to the terminal.

Sorry if this bad answer has affected you for a long, long time.

--

the original answer (bad)

I found the solution on VSCode document:

Tip: You should set up a credential helper to avoid getting asked for credentials every time VS Code talks to your Git remotes. If you don't do this, you may want to consider Disabling Autofetch in the ... menu to reduce the number of prompts you get.

So, turn on the credential helper so that Git will save your password in memory for some time. By default, Git will cache your password for 15 minutes.

In Terminal, enter the following:

git config --global credential.helper cache
# Set git to use the credential memory cache

To change the default password cache timeout, enter the following:

git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600'
# Set the cache to timeout after 1 hour (setting is in seconds)

UPDATE (If original answer doesn't work)

I installed VS Code and config same above, but as @ddieppa said, It didn't work for me too. So I tried to find an option in User Setting, and I saw "git.autofetch" = true, now set it's false! VS Code is no longer required to enter password repeatedly again!

In menu, click File / Preferences / User Setting And type these:

Place your settings in this file to overwrite the default settings

{
  "git.autofetch": false
}