Cloning GitHub private repositories using Deploy Keys

Sometimes you want to clone a private repository to a computer without giving it complete access to your GitHub account. While deploy keys allow this, GitHub only allows a particular deploy key to be used in a single repository. This post describes a workaround.

First create a deploy key:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "deploy key for blahblah"

and save the key as, say, ~/.ssh/key_for_github_blahblah Add this as a deploy key in the GitHub settings for your repository.¹ If you want, you can give this key push access as well.

In ~/.ssh/config, add an entry like

Host some_unique_name.github.com
    HostName github.com
    PreferredAuthentications publickey
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key_for_github_blahblah

Now, clone your repository using

git clone git@some_unique_name.github.com:GITHUB_USERNAME/REPOSITORY_NAME.git REPOSITORY_NAME

If your deploy key had write access, changes you make in your local clone can also be pushed to GitHub.