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SSH user keys for personal use

Using SSH keys to secure Git operations

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You can use SSH keys to establish a secure connection between your computer and Bitbucket Data Center and Server for when you are performing read-only (pull, clone) Git operations from your local machine. Personal keys are attached to your Bitbucket account – they are bound by that account's permissions and use the account's identity for any operations.

Before you can use SSH keys to secure a connection with Bitbucket the following must have already been done:

  • your Bitbucket administrator must have already enabled SSH access in Bitbucket.
  • you need an SSH key! See Creating SSH keys. Alternatively, you can use an existing key, if it isn't already being used as a repository or project access key.
  • you need to have added your personal SSH key to your Bitbucket account – see the following section.

Once you have an SSH key associated with your Bitbucket account, using it is easy! See Use SSH keys to connect to Bitbucket repositories below.

Related pages:

Bitbucket supports the following SSH key types:
  • ED25519
  • RSA2 (we recommend you use a key size of at least 2048 bits)
  • ECDSA
  • DSA (we recommend you use other key types)

Note that:

  • A Bitbucket user can add any number of keys to their account.
  • You can use the same SSH access key for multiple repositories or projects.
  • Keys used for personal user accounts can't be re-used as a project or repository access key, and keys used as a project or repository access key can't be re-used for user accounts.

Add an SSH key to your Bitbucket account

  1. On Windows, in your command prompt, change directory to your .ssh directory, and copy the public key file to your clipboard by running:

    Windows 
    cd %userprofile%/.ssh
clip < id_ed25519.pub


    On macOS or Linux simply run the following in a terminal:

    Mac OS X 
    pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

    If pbcopy isn't working, locate the hidden .ssh folder, open the file in a text editor, and copy it to your clipboard.
    Note that on Linux, you may need to download and install xclip, then use that, as shown in this code snippet:

    Linux 
    sudo apt-get install xclip
xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

  2. In Bitbucket, go to your account:
     

    1. Select View profile.
  3. Click on SSH keys and then Add key. 
  4. Paste the key into the text box: 

  5. Click Add key. You're done!

Use SSH keys to connect to Bitbucket repositories

SSH access needs to have been set up, as described above. Once this is done, you can use SSH keys as follows:

  1. Go to Projects, click a project, and choose a repository from the list.
  2. Click Clone in the sidebar to see the clone URLs for the repository.
  3. Choose the clone URL you want to use. SSH is available if you have already added an SSH key to your account. If you haven't done that yet, see Add an SSH key to your Bitbucket account, above.
Last modified on May 9, 2022

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