Where to store the personal access token from GitHub?

Question

Is it necessary to store the personal access token somewhere locally on the machine after generating it in GitHub?

If yes, is there any preferred way where it could be

Answer 1

Half the point of passwords is that (ideally) you memorize them and the system hashes them, so therefore they're never stored anywhere in plain text.
Yet GitHub's personal access token system seems to basically force you to store the token in plain text?

First, a PAT (Personal Access Token) is not a simple password, but an equivalent that:

• you can generate multiple time (for instance, one per machine from which you need to access GitHub repository)
• you can revoke at any time (from the GitHub web interface), which makes that PAT obsolete, even if it lingers around on one of those machines.

That differs from your password, which is unique to your account, and cannot be easily changed without having to also modify it everywhere you happen to use it.

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Since a PAT can be used in place of a password when performing Git operations over HTTPS with Git on the command line or the API, you can use a git credential helper to cache it securely.
On Windows, for instance, that would use the Windows Credential Manager, through the GCM -- Git Credential Manager -- for Windows:

git config --global credential.helper manager

The first time you are pushing to a repo, a popup will ask for your credentials: username and your PAT.
The next time, it won't ask, and reuse directly that PAT, which remains stored securely in your Credential Manager.

A similar idea applies for Mac with the OSX keychain, and Linux with the GNOME Keyring.
The idea remains: store the PAT in an encrypted credentials store.

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The more modern soution (Q4 2020) is microsoft Git-Credential-Manager-Core

git config --global credential.helper manager-core

You need for that to install git-credential-manager-core, downloading gcmcore-linux_amd64.2.0.252.766.deb

sudo dpkg -i 
git-credential-manager-core configure

Linux support is not fully implemented yet, but it will be soon.