githubvisual-studio-codevscode-extensionspersonal-access-token

How can I choose what account is used when accessing GitHub from VSCode?

VS Code has a builtin extension GitHub Authentication that manages creation of a GitHub Personal Access Token and automatic logins.

However, if you are using more then one GitHub account, the extension might try generating a PAT for the wrong account, resulting in an access denied.

Logon failed, use ctrl+c to cancel basic credential prompt.
remote: Permission to MyAccount/repo.git denied to OtherAccount.
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/MyAccount/repo.git/': Failure when receiving data from the peer
Solution

  • The remedy is to abort the web session started by GitHub Authentication, and then in the message bar of VSCode, click on GitHub Authentication to trigger the manual failback PAT handling.

    First make sure you have a current PAT created for repo access for MyAccount on GitHub. Then copy the PAT and enter it VSCode when prompted.