Re: Why git on windows pops up Git Credential Manager inspite of having set a credential helper in .gitconfig

Aditya Garg
2025-07-01T16:58:56Z

On 01-07-2025 10:11 pm, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> Hi Aditya,
>
> On Tue, 1 Jul 2025, Aditya Garg wrote:
>
>> I am having this issue with Git for Windows that in case I configure a credential helper by following the git
>> credentials documentation (https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials), the Git Credential Manager still pops up.
>> I simply close the pop up window, and then it seems to be getting the password from my credential manager.
>>
>> I removed it using git config --edit --system, but after every update, it pops out again.
>
> As per
> https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials#Documentation/gitcredentials.txt-helper:
>
> If there are multiple instances of the `credential.helper` configuration
> variable, each helper will be tried in turn, and may provide a username,
> password, or nothing. Once Git has acquired both a username and a
> non-expired password, no more helpers will be tried.
>
>> I wonder if some proper fix is there for this.
>
> Yes, from the same page:
>
> If `credential.helper` is configured to the empty string, this resets the
> helper list to empty (so you may override a helper set by a lower-priority
> config file by configuring the empty-string helper, followed by whatever
> set of helpers you would like).
>
> So the trick is to call `git config set --global --add credential.helper ''`

I wonder if this is a bug in git for windows?

PS C:\Users\Aditya\git> git config set --global --add credential.helper ''
error: unknown option `add'
usage: git config set [<file-option>] [--type=<type>] [--comment=<message>] [--all] [--value=<value>] [--fixed-value] <name> <value>

Config file location
--[no-]global use global config file
--[no-]system use system config file
--[no-]local use repository config file
--[no-]worktree use per-worktree config file
-f, --[no-]file <file>
use given config file
--[no-]blob <blob-id> read config from given blob object

Type
-t, --[no-]type <type>
value is given this type
--bool value is "true" or "false"
--int value is decimal number
--bool-or-int value is --bool or --int
--bool-or-str value is --bool or string
--path value is a path (file or directory name)
--expiry-date value is an expiry date

Filter
--[no-]all replace multi-valued config option with new value
--[no-]value <pattern>
show config with values matching the pattern
--[no-]fixed-value use string equality when comparing values to value pattern

Other
--[no-]comment <value>
human-readable comment string (# will be prepended as needed)
--[no-]append add a new line without altering any existing values

Or you meant by --append as per https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config

I anyways manually added `helper = ` line and now it works well! Thanks a lot.