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Keys and SSH agents

Wayfinder logs in with the Mac's own OpenSSH, so the keys and the agent that work in Terminal work here, with nothing to import. Your private keys stay where they are.

Log in with a key instead of a password

  1. In the sidebar, Control-click the host and choose Set Up Key Login…
  2. Pick a key from ~/.ssh, or choose A new key. A new key is an ed25519 key made by the Mac's ssh-keygen, with a passphrase if you give one.
  3. Wayfinder logs in the way it does now, one last time, and adds the key's public half to the host's authorized_keys, as ssh-copy-id does.
  4. It then logs in with that key alone, to show it works.

ssh tries keys with the usual names, such as id_ed25519, by itself. For any other key, a host you added in Wayfinder is saved with it. For a host in your own ssh_config, Wayfinder shows the IdentityFile line to add to it, since it does not change your file.

1Password and Secretive

Their agents keep keys inside 1Password or in the Mac's Secure Enclave, and ssh asks them to sign. There are two ways to use one.

In Wayfinder's settings

Once 1Password or Secretive is installed, Settings › Connections › SSH agent offers it. Every host uses that agent, except one whose own ssh_config names another.

In your ssh_config

Add IdentityAgent to ~/.ssh/config, as their own guides say. Then Terminal uses it too. For 1Password:

Host *
  IdentityAgent "~/Library/Group Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.1password/t/agent.sock"

For Secretive:

Host *
  IdentityAgent ~/Library/Containers/com.maxgoedjen.Secretive.SecretAgent/Data/socket.ssh

Put a Host line naming certain hosts in place of Host * to use the agent for those alone. Since every tab, file pane and tunnel to a host shares one connection, the agent asks for approval once for that host, not once per tab.

Security keys and passphrases

Next: Tunnels