Checking for existing SSH keys
Before you generate an SSH key, you can check to see if you have any existing SSH keys.
Open Git Bash.
Enter ls -al ~/.ssh to see if existing SSH keys are present:
ls -al ~/.ssh
# Lists the files in your .ssh directory, if they exist
Check the directory listing to see if you already have a public SSH key.
By default, the filenames of the public keys are one of the following:
id_dsa.pub
id_ecdsa.pub
id_ed25519.pub
id_rsa.pub
If you don't have an existing public and private key pair, or don't wish to use any that are available to connect to GitHub, then generate a new SSH key. If you see an existing public and private key pair listed (for example id_rsa.pub and id_rsa) that you would like to use to connect to GitHub, you can add your SSH key to the ssh-agent.