GH-AUTH-LOGIN(1) GitHub CLI manual GH-AUTH-LOGIN(1)

gh-auth-login - Log in to a GitHub account

gh auth login [flags]

Authenticate with a GitHub host.

The default authentication mode is a web-based browser flow. After completion, an authentication token will be stored securely in the system credential store. If a credential store is not found or there is an issue using it gh will fallback to writing the token to a plain text file. See gh auth status for its stored location.

Alternatively, use --with-token to pass in a token on standard input. The minimum required scopes for the token are: repo, read:org, and gist.

Alternatively, gh will use the authentication token found in environment variables. This method is most suitable for "headless" use of gh such as in automation. See gh help environment for more info.

To use gh in GitHub Actions, add GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }} to env.

The git protocol to use for git operations on this host can be set with --git-protocol, or during the interactive prompting. Although login is for a single account on a host, setting the git protocol will take effect for all users on the host.

Specifying ssh for the git protocol will detect existing SSH keys to upload, prompting to create and upload a new key if one is not found. This can be skipped with --skip-ssh-key flag.

The protocol to use for git operations on this host: {ssh|https}
The hostname of the GitHub instance to authenticate with
Save authentication credentials in plain text instead of credential store
Additional authentication scopes to request
Skip generate/upload SSH key prompt
Open a browser to authenticate
Read token from standard input 

# Start interactive setup
$ gh auth login
# Authenticate against github.com by reading the token from a file
$ gh auth login --with-token < mytoken.txt
# Authenticate with specific host
$ gh auth login --hostname enterprise.internal

gh-auth(1)

Apr 2024