Using SSH over the HTTPS port

Sometimes, firewalls refuse to allow SSH connections entirely. If using HTTPS cloning with credential caching is not an option, you can attempt to clone using an SSH connection made over the HTTPS port. Most firewall rules should allow this, but proxy servers may interfere.

In this article

Warning

GitHub Enterprise Server users: Accessing GitHub Enterprise Server via SSH over the HTTPS port is currently not supported.

To test if SSH over the HTTPS port is possible, run this SSH command:

$ ssh -T -p 443 git@ssh.github.com
# Hi USERNAME! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not
# provide shell access.

If that worked, great! If not, you may need to follow our troubleshooting guide.

Note

The hostname for port 443 is ssh.github.com, not github.com.

This article contains commands or examples that use the github.com domain. You might access GitHub at a different domain, such as octocorp.ghe.com.

Now, to clone the repository, you can run the following command:

git clone ssh://git@ssh.github.com:443/YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-REPOSITORY.git

Enabling SSH connections over HTTPS

If you are able to SSH into git@ssh.github.com over port 443, you can override your SSH settings to force any connection to GitHub.com to run through that server and port.

To set this in your SSH configuration file, edit the file at ~/.ssh/config, and add this section:

Host github.com
    Hostname ssh.github.com
    Port 443
    User git

You can test that this works by connecting once more to GitHub.com:

$ ssh -T git@github.com
# Hi USERNAME! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not
# provide shell access.

Updating known hosts

The first time you interact with GitHub after switching to port 443, you may get a warning message that the host wasn't found in known_hosts, or that it was found by another name.

# The authenticity of host '[ssh.github.com]:443 ([140.82.112.36]:443)' can't be established.
# ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:+DiY3wvvV6TuJJhbpZisF/zLDA0zPMSvHdkr4UvCOqU.
# This host key is known by the following other names/addresses:
#     ~/.ssh/known_hosts:32: github.com
# Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?

It is safe to answer "yes" to this question, assuming that the SSH fingerprint matches one of GitHub's published fingerprints. For the list of fingerprints, see GitHub's SSH key fingerprints.