Up until this point, you have been using the secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) to communicate between your local system and Bitbucket. When you use HTTPS, you need to authenticate (supply a username and password) each time you take an action that communicates with the Bitbucket server. You can specify the username in the DVCS configuration file; you don't want to store your password there though where anyone can see it. So, this means you must manually type a password when you use HTTPS with your local repository. Who wants to do that? This page shows you how to use secure shell (SSH) to communicate with the Bitbucket server and avoid having to manually type a password.

Finally, setting up an SSH identity can be prone to error. Allow yourself some time, perhaps as much as an hour depending on your experience, to complete this page. If you run into issues, check out Troubleshoot SSH Issues for extra information that may help you along. You can even skip this whole page and continue to use HTTPS if you want.