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Set up Git

In this article

At the heart of GitHub is an open source version control system (VCS) called Git. Git is responsible for everything GitHub-related that happens locally on your computer.

Using Git

To use Git on the command line, you'll need to download, install, and configure Git on your computer. You can also install GitHub CLI to use GitHub from the command line. For more information, see "About GitHub CLI."

If you want to work with Git locally, but don't want to use the command line, you can instead download and install the GitHub Desktop client. For more information, see "Installing and configuring GitHub Desktop."

If you don't need to work with files locally, GitHub lets you complete many Git-related actions directly in the browser, including:

Setting up Git

  1. Download and install the latest version of Git.

Note: If you are using a Chrome OS device, additional set up is required:

  1. Install a terminal emulator such as Termux from the Google Play Store on your Chrome OS device.
  2. From the terminal emulator that you installed, install Git. For example, in Termux, enter apt install git and then type y when prompted.
  1. Set your username in Git.
  2. Set your commit email address in Git.

Next steps: Authenticating with GitHub from Git

When you connect to a GitHub repository from Git, you'll need to authenticate with GitHub using either HTTPS or SSH.

Note: You can authenticate to GitHub using GitHub CLI, for either HTTP or SSH. For more information, see gh auth login.

If you clone with HTTPS, you can cache your GitHub credentials in Git using a credential helper.

Connecting over SSH

If you clone with SSH, you must generate SSH keys on each computer you use to push or pull from GitHub.

Celebrate

Congratulations, you now have Git and GitHub all set up! You may now choose to create a repository where you can put your projects. This is a great way to back up your code and makes it easy to share the code around the world. For more information see "Create a repository".

You can create a copy of a repository by forking it and propose the changes that you want to see without affecting the upstream repository. For more information see "Fork a repository."

Each repository on GitHub is owned by a person or an organization. You can interact with the people, repositories, and organizations by connecting and following them on GitHub. For more information see "Be social."

GitHub has a great support community where you can ask for help and talk to people from around the world. Join the conversation on Github Support Community.