SSH Keys on OS X

December 8th, 2006

It turns out that if you use an SSH/SFTP aware app on a Mac (such as transmit) and can’t figure out where you are supposed to choose the key to use…OS X handles it all for you.

Simply make sure the key is in your /.ssh directory (and possibly setup a /.ssh/config file pointing to your key if your key doesn’t seem to get picked up). Now when your ssh aware app tries to connect it will use the key automatically!

This is perhaps as you might expect, but if you have a password protected keyfile then you need to enter the password for the keyfile in the password box of the application rather than a user login password. This is very counter intuitive in my opinion (and the reason I had to spend so long looking for a solution).

Spread the word – I have confirmed this works in Navicat and Transmit so I assume it will work for all SSH/SFTP aware apps on OS X.

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