How to run ssh-add on windows?

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Original answer using git’s start-ssh-agent

Make sure you have Git installed and have git’s cmd folder in your PATH. For example, on my computer the path to git’s cmd folder is C:\Program Files\Git\cmd

Make sure your id_rsa file is in the folder c:\users\yourusername\.ssh

Restart your command prompt if you haven’t already, and then run start-ssh-agent. It will find your id_rsa and prompt you for the passphrase

Update 2019 – A better solution if you’re using Windows 10: OpenSSH is available as part of Windows 10 which makes using SSH from cmd/powershell much easier in my opinion. It also doesn’t rely on having git installed, unlike my previous solution.

  1. Open Manage optional features from the start menu and make sure you have Open SSH Client in the list. If not, you should be able to add it.

  2. Open Services from the start Menu

  3. Scroll down to OpenSSH Authentication Agent > right click > properties

  4. Change the Startup type from Disabled to any of the other 3 options. I have mine set to Automatic (Delayed Start)

  5. Open cmd and type where ssh to confirm that the top listed path is in System32. Mine is installed at C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh.exe. If it’s not in the list you may need to close and reopen cmd.

Once you’ve followed these steps, ssh-agent, ssh-add and all other ssh commands should now work from cmd. To start the agent you can simply type ssh-agent.

  1. Optional step/troubleshooting: If you use git, you should set the GIT_SSH environment variable to the output of where ssh which you ran before (e.g C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh.exe). This is to stop inconsistencies between the version of ssh you’re using (and your keys are added/generated with) and the version that git uses internally. This should prevent issues that are similar to this

Some nice things about this solution:

  • You won’t need to start the ssh-agent every time you restart your computer
  • Identities that you’ve added (using ssh-add) will get automatically added after restarts. (It works for me, but you might possibly need a config file in your c:\Users\User\.ssh folder)
  • You don’t need git!
  • You can register any rsa private key to the agent. The other solution will only pick up a key named id_rsa

Hope this helps

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