Announcing the Git Credential Manager for Windows 1.0

I’m pleased to announcing version 1.0 of the Git Credential Manager for Windows (GCM) is available. Since we introduce the first beta in October 2015, we received great feedback from the community and incorporated it into this release. This project replaces the WinStore credential manager, which is no longer maintained. We've also created a Git Credential Manager for Mac and Linux.

The GCM provides a lot of great features to make authentication seamless:

1. Secure password storage in the Windows Credential Store

2. Multi-factor authentication support for Visual Studio Team Services.

3. Two-factor authentication support for GitHub

4. Personal Access Token generation and usage support for Visual Studio Team Services and GitHub

5. Non-interactive mode support for Visual Studio Team Services backed by Azure Directory

6. Optional settings for build agent optimization

After you download and install the GCM everything is setup. The next time you access you fetch, clone, push, etc. you’ll be asked for your username and password on the command prompt. Once you enter them, they’ll be stored in the Windows Credential Store and seamlessly reused so you don’t have to type them again.

This same flow works for Team Services, except you’ll see a dialog asking for your Microsoft Account or Azure Active Directory credentials. If you’ve configured multi-factor authentication you’ll be prompted for that as well. After that, the GCM creates a person access token for your Team Services account and uses it to silently authenticate so you don’t need to type your username and password again. If you’ve already authenticated to Team Services using Visual Studio, we’ll silently use those credentials so you aren’t prompted.

You can revoke the personal access token at any time by going to your Team Services profile settings.

For more information on the Git Credential Manager for Windows, Mac, or Linux checkout our install documentation or the repos on GitHub (Windows, Mac and Linux). Please file any issues in our GitHub repos and feel free to contribute fixes or features.

Jeremy Epling
VSTS / TFS Program Manager