Git push from Visual Studio Code: "No anonymous write access. Authentication failed"

A simpler method is to use personal access tokens at GitHub. This feature can be set up by going to your GitHub account → Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Generate a personal access token. Make your access control selections, generate, then copy and save your new token. After this, go to your Git project directory and this enter in the terminal:

git remote set-url origin https://[email protected]/your_user/your_project.git

From now on you can easily do git push from the terminal or Visual Studio Code.

Visual Studio Code just uses your environment's Git configuration when it commits and pushes to the remote repository. So, you'll have to first make sure that your local environment is set up correctly for Git, before worrying about Visual Studio Code.

First, I recommend going through the First-Time Git Setup from the Git documentation. The most important part there is setting up your Git identity:

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email [email protected]

Second, I recommend setting up SSH keys on your local machine and on your GitHub profile. GitHub has an entire tutorial on Connecting to GitHub with SSH.

Basically:

1. Generate a SSH key on your machine (Generating a new SSH key))

   • There's a step there that specifies -C "[email protected]"

   • Make sure that it matches the git user.email that you set as your Git identity

2. Add that SSH key to your GitHub account, in the SSH and GPG keys section.

You can check that your SSH keys are valid by entering this in the terminal:

ssh -T [email protected]

Output:

Hi ginomempin! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Now,

1. Clone your repository

   • Make sure to select the Clone with SSH option in GitHub

     

2. In Visual Studio Code, make sure to use that same [email protected]:..... URL

   

I do not have any Git in my Windows credentials

You can choose to disable that entirely, as I find that the Windows Credential Manager can cause problems, and using SSH is more "stable". See How do I disable Git Credential Manager for Windows?.

Yahooo! Finally, an issue is resolved

This is only for those who are facing this issue from the last update of Visual Studio Code (2021-11-15 or around).

The issue on GitHub Community #LINK

There isn't any need to downgrade Visual Studio Code or the Git version. Basically, that is what I understood from the fix that worked for me. I think it's a sort of conflict between GitHub and Git authentication.

So there are a few steps you can try and hopefully it would be fixed for you too.

Open your Settings in Visual Studio Code.

1. Open settings from the left bottom corner (Settings icon) or press Ctrl + ,

2. type "Authentication" in the search option. It will show something like this:

   

3. You need to uncheck Git: Terminal Authentication (for example)

   

4. Only GitHub: GitHub Authentication should be checked.

Now you need to close the opened terminal (if any). Open your new terminal and try with Git commands.

On my end, everything is working fine.

After setting up the SSH key, you need to type this in your IDE (I'm using Visual Studio Code)

git remote -v

This will show you your current remote branch URL, but you can no longer use that.

To update it, type this in your console

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:YOURUSERNAME/reponame.git

Now try to push or make any changes

NOTE: From my perspective I think you'll have to perform this operation for all your existing (old) repositories too.

Try to go through the terminal with sudo git push. If you have two-factor verification, use the token instead of the password like this:

Username for 'https://github.com': <username>

Password for 'https://[email protected]': <token>

You need to go back to the old version of Visual Studio Code and everything will be fine and all problems will be solved. It seems that the problem is in the latest version of Visual Studio Code and I hope it will be fixed. I am using Linux, an Ubuntu distribution.

September 2021 (version 1.61)

Delete your working branches after merging successfully and then:

git status
git push

For those still struggling, Windows credentials was the culprit in my situation:

Original answer

All my local/global settings were set, reset, deleted, etc., etc., but nothing worked.

I deleted everything Git-related in Windows Credential Manager, and it was fixed.

What I have learned is that: You cloned the repository into an SSH terminal in Visual Studio Code. The first thing you could have done is to use a Git Bash terminal. It usually has the sign ">" as against the Bash terminal, which has a cube-like sign.

So before you clone a repository make sure you are using a Git Bash terminal, hence, why the problem. Here is what I did. So since you used bash we have to play with "ssh".

First step, write this command in the repository you cloned

git config --global user.name "username in github"
git config --global user.email "email used in gihub"

Second Step

Follow this documentation patiently

When you get to this step below in the document, continue below;

Step 2

Add your SSH private key to the ssh-agent. 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.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Instead of typing the command "ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519", use this: ssh-add,

It will prompt you to enter paraphrase or something. Type it.

Then make sure you have added the SSH key successfully by running this code:

ls -al ~/.ssh

Try and cd to the directory of ssh.

You should see something like this:

-rw--- 1 barry barry 465 Nov 1 07:47 id_ed23333
-rw--  1 jospeh jose 115 Nov 1 09:47 id_ed23333.pub

Try and run this command:

cat id_ed23333.pub

It will give you your SSH key. Copy it and go to your GitHub account. After this, go to your repository, click on "code". You should see http /ssh. Click on "ssh'. It should show you if you need to add an SSH key. Click on the Add key. Name the key anything you want and paste the key you copied then add key.

Go back to Visual Studio Code and rerun the usually code.

git add .
git commit -m "message"
git push