Checking for existing SSH keys Leave a Comment / IoT / By Franchezka Revereza Before you generate an SSH key, you can check to see if you have any existing SSH keys. 1. Open Git Bash. 2. 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 3. 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_rsa.pubid_ecdsa.pubid_ed25519.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.