How sshbar lays out your SSH keys
Keys are how SSH logs you in without a password. This chapter explains the key pair itself, then how sshbar finds, shows, and creates them.
What an SSH key is
An SSH key is a pair of files:
Secret. Stays on your Mac, always. Proves you are you.
Safe to share. This is the one you put on servers.
You add the public key to a server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys; the matching private key on your Mac proves it's you, so you log in without typing a password. Keys normally live in ~/.ssh.
How sshbar shows them
The SSH Keys section scans ~/.ssh, sub-folders included, and lists your keys, grouped by folder. It recognizes keys by content, not filename:
# a public key: first line starts with a key type ssh-ed25519 … ssh-rsa … ecdsa-sha2-* … sk-… # a private key: first line is a PEM header -----BEGIN … PRIVATE KEY-----
So config, known_hosts, and authorized_keys never show up in the list.
Adding a key
The + button in the SSH Keys section offers two modes:
Paste a private key you received: a deploy key, an exported key. If it has no passphrase, the matching .pub is derived automatically.
Runs ssh-keygen for you: ED25519 (the default) or RSA (2048/3072/4096), an optional comment, and an optional passphrase.
Both modes write into ~/.ssh/sshbar/ with strict permissions: files 600 in a 700 folder. sshbar never touches your existing keys; it only writes inside its own folder.
Copy the public key and add it to the server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. That's what lets the server recognize you.