Telling Git about your signing key

Telling Git about your GPG key

If you're using a GPG key that matches your committer identity and your verified email address associated with your account on GitHub.com, then you can begin signing commits and signing tags.

If you have multiple GPG keys, you need to tell Git which one to use.

1. Open Terminal.

2. If you have previously configured Git to use a different key format when signing with --gpg-sign, unset this configuration so the default format of openpgp will be used.

   git config --global --unset gpg.format
   

3. Use the gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long command to list the long form of the GPG keys for which you have both a public and private key. A private key is required for signing commits or tags.

   Shell

   gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
   

   gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
   

   Note: Some GPG installations on Linux may require you to use gpg2 --list-keys --keyid-format LONG to view a list of your existing keys instead. In this case you will also need to configure Git to use gpg2 by running git config --global gpg.program gpg2.

4. From the list of GPG keys, copy the long form of the GPG key ID you'd like to use. In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

   Shell

   $ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
   /Users/hubot/.gnupg/secring.gpg
   ------------------------------------
   sec   4096R/3AA5C34371567BD2 2016-03-10 [expires: 2017-03-10]
   uid                          Hubot <[email protected]>
   ssb   4096R/4BB6D45482678BE3 2016-03-10
   

   
   $ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
   /Users/hubot/.gnupg/secring.gpg
   ------------------------------------
   sec   4096R/3AA5C34371567BD2 2016-03-10 [expires: 2017-03-10]
   uid                          Hubot <[email protected]>
   ssb   4096R/4BB6D45482678BE3 2016-03-10
   

5. To set your primary GPG signing key in Git, paste the text below, substituting in the GPG primary key ID you'd like to use. In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

   git config --global user.signingkey 3AA5C34371567BD2
   

   Alternatively, when setting a subkey include the ! suffix. In this example, the GPG subkey ID is 4BB6D45482678BE3:

   git config --global user.signingkey 4BB6D45482678BE3!
   

6. Optionally, to configure Git to sign all commits by default, enter the following command:

   git config --global commit.gpgsign true
   

   For more information, see "Signing commits."

7. To add your GPG key to your .bashrc startup file, run the following command:

   [ -f ~/.bashrc ] && echo -e '\nexport GPG_TTY=$(tty)' >> ~/.bashrc