The -K
option is in Apple's standard version of ssh-add
, which stores the passphrase in your keychain for you when you add an ssh key to the ssh-agent. If you have installed a different version of ssh-add
, it may lack support for -K
.
Solving the issue
To add your SSH private key to the ssh-agent, you can specify the path to the Apple version of ssh-add
:
$ /usr/bin/ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
Note: If you created your key with a different name, or if you are adding an existing key that has a different name, replace id_ed25519 in the command with the name of your private key file.
Further reading
- "Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent"
- Linux man page for SSH-ADD
- To view Apple's man page for SSH-ADD, run
man ssh-add
in Terminal